CAGO 


:i!;I;  ;;■:: 


•AN  IMPRESSIONS 

:  ...>MINGH AM 


\ 


FROM     DUBLIN     TO     CHICAGO 


FROM   DUBLIN 
TO    CHICAGO 

SOME  NOTES  ON  A  TOUR  IN  AMERICA 


BY 

GEORGE  A.  BIRMINGHAM 

AUTHOR   OF   "SPANISH  GOLD,"   "GENERAL  JOHN  REGAN,"   "THE  LOST  TRIBES, 
"THE  BED   HAND   OF  ULSTER,"   ETC. 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN   COMPANY 


Copyright,  1914 

BY 

GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Printed  in  1914 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   I 
The  Spirit  of  Adventure 9 


CHAPTER    II 
Pressmen  and  Politicians .40 

CHAPTER    III 
The  "Hustling"  Legend 66 

CHAPTER    IV 
Holiday  Fever •        «        «      93 

CHAPTER    V 
The   Iron   Trail 113 

CHAPTER    VI 
Advance,  Chicago!        ........    132 

CHAPTER    VII 
Memphis   and   the    Negro **» 

CHAPTER    VIII 
The  Land  of  the  Free 177 


4  G  8  b  u  o 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER     IX 

PAGE 

Woman    in   the    States 210 


CHAPTER    X 
Men   and    Husbands 229 

CHAPTER    XI 
The    Open   Door 247 

CHAPTER    XII 
Colleges   and    Students 270 

CHAPTER    XIII 
The   Irishman   Abroad 299 


FROM    DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 


FROM    DUBLIN   TO 
CHICAGO 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  ADVENTURE 

"From  Dublin  to  Chicago."  You  can 
take  the  phrase  as  the  epitome  of  a  tragedy, 
the  long,  slow,  century  and  a  half  old  tragedy 
of  the  flight  of  the  Irish  people  from  their 
own  country,  the  flight  of  the  younger  men 
and  women  of  our  race  from  the  land  of  their 
birth  to  the  "Oilean  tJr,"  the  new  island  of 
promise  and  hope  across  the  Atlantic.  Much 
might  be  written  very  feelingly  about  that 
exodus.  The  first  part  of  it  began  in  reality 
long  ago,  in  the  middle  of  the  18th  century, 
when  the  farmers  of  north-east  Ulster  were 
making  their  struggle  for  conditions  of  life 
which  were  economically  possible.  When  the 
land  war  of  those  days  was  being  waged  and 

[9] 


..  JEROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

the  fighters  on  the  one  side  were  called 
"Hearts  of  Steel,"  that  war  which  resulted  in 
the  establishment  of  the  once  famous  Ulster 
Custom,  hopeless  men  fled  with  their  families 
from  Belfast,  from  Derry,  and  from  many 
smaller  northern  ports.  They  settled  in  Amer- 
ica and  avenged  their  wrongs  in  the  course  of 
the  War  of  Independence.  For  the  rest  of 
Ireland  the  great  exodus  began  later.  Not 
until  the  middle  of  the  19th  century  when  the 
famine  of  1846  and  the  following  years 
showed  unmistakably  that  the  social  order  of 
Connaught  and  Munster  was  impossible.  It 
continued,  that  exodus,  all  through  the  years 
of  the  later  land  war.  It  is  still  going  on, 
though  the  stream  is  feebler  to-day.  I  could 
write  a  good  deal  about  this  exodus,  could 
tell  of  forsaken  cottages,  of  sorrowful  de- 
partures, of  broken  hearts  left  behind.  But 
it  was  not  in  the  spirit  of  tragedy  that  we  made 
our  expedition  to  America,  from  Dublin  to 
Chicago. 

The  phrase  has  another  connotation.    It  car- 
ries with  it  a  sense  of  adventuring.     It  was 
[10] 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ADVENTURE 

often,  almost  always,  the  bravest  and  most  ad- 
venturous of  our  people  who  went.  It  was 
those  who  feared  their  fate  too  much  who 
stayed  at  home.  There  is  something  fascinat- 
ing in  all  the  records  of  adventuring.  We 
think  of  Vasco  da  Gama  pushing  his  way 
along  an  unknown  coast  till  he  rounded  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope.  We  think  of  Columbus 
sailing  after  the  setting  sun,  and  our  hearts 
are  lifted  up.  Less  daring,  but  surely  hardly 
less  romantic,  were  the  goings  forth  of  our 
Irish  boys  and  girls.  They  went  to  seek  sus- 
tenance, fortune,  life  at  its  fullest  and  freest 
in  an  unknown  land  in  unguessed  ways.  I 
like  to  think  of  the  hope  and  courage  of  those 
who  went.  They  had  songs — in  the  earlier 
days  of  the  adventuring — one  seldom  hears 
them  now — which  express  the  spirit  of  their 
going.  I  remember  taking  a  long  drive, 
twenty  years  ago,  through  a  summer  night 
with  a  young  farmer  who  for  the  most  part 
was  tongue-tied  and  silent  enough.  But  the 
twilight  of  that  June  evening  moved  him  be- 

en] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

yond  his  self-restraint  and  he  sang  to  me  with 
immense  emotion: 

"To  the  West!  to  the  West!  To  the  Land 
of  the  Free!"  I  was  vaguely  uncomfortable 
then,  not  understanding  what  was  in  his  heart. 
I  know  a  little  better  now.  He  was  a  man  with 
a  home,  settled  and  safe,  with  a  moderate 
comfort  secured  to  him,  but  the  spirit  of  ad- 
venturing was  in  his  blood,  and  America  repre- 
sented to  him  in  some  vague  way  the  Hy 
Brasil,  the  Isles  of  the  Blest,  which  had  long 
ago  captivated  the  imagination  of  his  ances- 
tors. 

Well,  we  went  adventuring,  too;  but  com- 
pared to  theirs  our  adventure  was  very  tame, 
very  unworthy.  Our  chip  was  swift  and  safe, 
or  nearly  safe.  It  seemed  hardly  worth  while 
to  make  our  wills  before  we  started.  There 
were  waiting  for  us  on  the  other  side  friends 
who  would  guide  our  steps  and  guard  us  from 
— there  were  no  dangers — all  avoidable  discom- 
fort. We  even  had  a  friend,  such  is  our  as- 
tounding good  fortune,  who  offered  to  go  with 
us  and  actually  did  meet  us  in  New  York.  He 
[12] 


THE    SPIRIT    OF   ADVENTURE 

had  spent  much  time  in  America  and  was  well 
accustomed  to  the  ways  of  that  country.  We 
were  dining  in  his  company,  I  remember,  in 
the  familiar  comfort  of  a  London  club,  when 
the  news  that  we  were  really  to  go  to  America 
first  came  to  us. 

"I'd  better  go,  too,"  he  said,  "you'll  want 
some  one  to  take  care  of  you.  I  don't  think 
that  either  one  or  other  of  you  is  to  be  trusted 
to  the  American  newspaper  reporters  without 
an  experienced  friend  at  your  elbows." 

Next  time  we  dined  in  our  friend's  company 
it  was  in  the  restaurant  of  the  Ritz  Carlton  in 
New  York,  and  very  glad  we  were  to  see  him, 
though  the  newspaper  reporter  in  America  is 
by  no  means  the  dangerous  wild  beast  he  is 
supposed  to  be. 

There  was  thus  little  enough  of  real  adven- 
turing about  our  journey  to  America.  Yet  to 
us  it  was  a  strange  and  wonderful  thing.  We 
felt  as  Charles  Kingsley  did  when  he  wrote 
"At  Last,"  for  a  visit  to  America  had  long 
been  a  dream  with  us.  There  are  other  places 
in  the  world  to  which  we  wanted  and  still  want 

[13] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

to  go.  Egypt  is  one  of  them,  for  we  desire  to 
see  the  deserts  where  St.  Antony  fasted  and 
prayed.  The  South  Pacific  Archipelago  is 
another,  for  we  are  lovers  of  Stevenson;  but 
for  me,  at  least,  the  United  States  came  first. 
I  wanted  to  see  them  more  than  I  wanted  to 
see  the  Nitrian  Desert  or  Samoa.  It  was  not 
Niagara  that  laid  hold  on  my  imagination,  or 
the  Mississippi,  though  I  did  want  to  see  it 
because  of  "Huckleberry  Finn."  What  I  de- 
sired most  was  to  meet  American  people  in 
their  own  native  land,  to  see  for  myself  what 
they  had  made  of  their  continent,  to  under- 
stand, if  I  could,  how  they  felt  and  thought,  to 
hear  what  they  talked  about,  to  experience  their 
way  of  living.  I  wanted  to  see  Irish  friends 
whom  I  had  known  as  boys  and  girls.  I  had 
been  intimate  with  many  of  them  before  they 
went  out.  I  had  seen  them,  changed  almost  be- 
yond recognition,  when  they  returned,  on  rare 
short  visits  to  their  homes.  I  wanted  to  know 
what  they  were  doing  out  there,  to  see  with  my 
own  eyes  what  it  was  which  made  new  men  and 
women  of  them.  I  wanted  to  know  why  some 
[14] 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ADVENTURE 

of  them  succeeded  and  grew  rich,  why  others, 
not  inferior  according  to  our  Irish  judgment, 
came  back  beaten  and  disillusioned  to  settle 
down  again  into  the  old  ways.  Neither  Egypt 
nor  Samoa,  not  India,  not  Jerusalem  itself, 
promised  so  much  to  me  as  America  did. 

There  is  besides  a  certain  practical  advan- 
tage, in  our  particular  case,  which  America  has 
over  any  other  country  to  which  we  could 
travel.  The  Americans  speak  English.  This 
is  a  small  matter,  no  doubt,  to  good  linguists, 
but  we  are  both  of  us  singularly  stupid  about 
foreign  tongues.  My  French,  for  instance,  is 
despicable.  It  is  good  enough  for  use  in  Italy. 
It  serves  all  practical  purposes  in  Spain  and 
Portugal,  but  it  is  a  very  poor  means  of  con- 
veying my  thoughts  in  France.  For  some 
reason  the  French  people  have  great  difficulty 
in  understanding  it,  and  their  version  of  the 
language  is  almost  incomprehensible  to  me, 
though  I  can  carry  on  long  conversations  with 
people  of  any  other  nation  when  they  speak 
French.  It  is  the  same  with  my  Italian,  my 
German  and  my  Portuguese.    They  are  none 

[15] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

of  them  much  good  to  me  in  the  countries  to 
which  they  are  supposed  to  belong.  This  is 
a  severe  handicap  when  traveling.  We  both 
hate  the  feeling  that  we  are  mere  tourists.  We 
do  not  like  to  be  confined  to  hotels  with  poly- 
glot head  waiters  in  them,  or  to  be  afraid  to 
stir  out  of  the  channels  buoyed  out  with  Cook's 
interpreters.  We  see  sights,  indeed,  visit  pic- 
ture galleries,  cathedrals,  gape  at  mountains 
and  waterfalls ;  but  we  never  penetrate  into  the 
inside  of  the  life  of  these  foreign  countries. 
We  are  never  able  to  philosophize  pleasantly 
about  the  way  in  which  people  live  in  them. 
The  best  we  can  do  is  to  wander  after  nightfall 
along  the  side  streets  of  cities,  or  to  rub  shoul- 
ders with  the  shopping  crowd  during  the  after- 
noon in  Naples  or  Lisbon.  America  is  foreign 
enough.  It  is  as  foreign  as  any  European 
country,  as  foreign  as  any  country  in  the  world 
in  which  people  wear  ordinary  clothes.  I  dare 
say  Algiers  is  more  foreign.  I  am  sure  that 
Borneo  must  be.  But  New  York  is  just  as 
strange  a  place  as  Paris  or  Home  and  therefore 
just  as  interesting,  with  this  advantage  for  us 
[16] 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ADVENTURE 

that  we  could  understand,  after  a  few  days, 
every  word  that  was  spoken  round  us. 

Indeed  this  similarity  of  language  was  some- 
thing of  a  disappointment  to  us.  We  did  not 
actually  expect  to  hear  people  say  "I  guess" 
at  the  beginning  of  every  sentence.  We  knew 
that  was  as  impossible  as  the  frequent  "Be- 
gorras"  with  which  we  Irish  are  credited.  But 
we  had  read  several  delightful  American 
books,  one  called  "Rules  of  the  Game"  with 
particular  attention,  and  we  thought  the 
American  language  would  be  more  vigorously 
picturesque  than  it  turns  out  to  be.  The 
American  in  books  uses  phrases  and  employs 
metaphors  which  are  a  continual  joy.  His  con- 
versation is  a  series  of  stimulating  shocks.  In 
real  life  he  does  not  keep  up  to  that  level. 
He  talks  very  much  as  an  Englishman  does. 
There  are,  indeed,  ways  of  pronouncing  cer- 
tain words  which  are  strange  and  very  pleasant. 
I  would  give  a  good  deal  to  be  able  to  say 
"very"  and  "America"  as  these  words  are  said 
across  the  Atlantic.  "Vurry"  does  not  repre- 
sent the  sound,  nor  does  "Amurrica,"  but  I 

[17] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

have  tried  in  vain  to  pick  up  that  vowel.  I 
suppose  I  am  tone  deaf.  I  either  caricature  it 
as  "vurry"  or  relapse  into  the  lean  English 
version  of  the  word.  There  are  also  some 
familiar  words  which  are  used  in  ways  strange 
to  me.  "Through,"  for  instance,  is  a  word 
which  I  am  thoroughly  accustomed  to,  and 
"cereal' '  is  one  which  I  often  come  across  in 
books  dealing  with  agriculture.  But  I  was 
puzzled  one  morning  when  an  attentive  Amer- 
ican parlor  maid,  with  her  eye  on  my  porridge 
plate,  asked  me  whether  I  was  "through  with 
the  cereal."  Solicitors  on  this  side  of  the  At- 
lantic are  regarded  as  more  or  less  respectable 
members  of  society.  Some  of  their  clients  may 
consider  them  crafty,  but  no  one  would  class 
them,  as  actors  used  to  be  classed,  with  vaga- 
bonds. It  was  therefore  a  surprise  to  me  to 
read  a  notice  on  an  office  door:  "Solicitors 
and  beggars  are  forbidden  to  enter  this  build- 
ing." I  made  enquiries  about  what  the  solici- 
tors had  done  to  deserve  this,  and  found  that 
"solicitor,"  in  that  part  of  America,  perhaps 
all  over  America,  means,  not  a  kind  of  lawyer, 
[18] 


THE    SPIRIT   OF   ADVENTURE 

but  one  who  solicits  subscriptions,  either  for 
some  charity  or  for  his  own  use  and  benefit. 

There  are  other  words,  "Baggage  check," 
for  instance,  which  could  not  be  familiar  to 
us,  because  we  have  not  got  the  thing  to  which 
they  belong  in  the  British  Isles.  And  a  highly 
picturesque  vigorous  phrase  meets  one  now 
and  then.  There  was  an  occasion  in  which  a 
laundry  annoyed  us  very  much.  It  did  not 
bring  back  some  clothes  which  had  gone  to  be 
washed.  We  complained  to  a  pleasant  and 
highly  vital  young  lady  who  controlled  all  the 
telephones  in  our  hotel.  She  took  our  side  in 
the  dispute  at  once,  seized  the  nearest  receiver, 
and  promised  to  "lay  out  that  laundry  right 
now."  We  went  up  to  our  rooms  comforted 
with  the  vision  of  a  whole  staff  of  washer 
women  lying  in  rows  like  corpses,  with  napkins 
tied  under  their  chins,  and  white  sheets  over 
them.  Americans  ought  not  to  swear,  and  do, 
in  fact,  swear  much  less  than  English  people 
in  ordinary  conversation.  The  Englishman, 
when  things  go  wrong  with  him,  is  almost 
forced  to  say  "Damn"  in  order  to  express  his 

[19] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

feelings.  His  way  of  speaking  his  native  lan- 
guage offers  him  no  alternative.  The  Amer- 
ican has  at  command  a  small  battery  of  phrases 
far  more  helpful  than  any  oath.  It  is  no  temp- 
tation to  damn  a  laundry  when  you  can  "lay 
it  out"  by  telephone. 

I  like  the  American  use  of  the  word  "right" 
in  such  phrases  as  "right  here,"  "right  now," 
and  "right  away."  When  you  are  told,  by 
telephone,  as  you  are  told  almost  everything  in 
America,  that  your  luggage  will  be  sent  up  to 
your  room  in  the  hotel  "right  now,"  you  are 
conscious  of  the  friendliness  of  intention  in  the 
hall  porter,  which  the  English  phrase  "at  once" 
wholly  fails  to  convey.  Even  if  you  have  to 
wait  several  hours  before  you  actually  get  the 
luggage  you  know  that  every  effort  is  being 
made  to  meet  your  wishes.  You  may  perhaps 
have  got  into  a  bath  and  find  yourself,  for  the 
want  of  clean  clothes,  forced  to  decide  between 
staying  there,  going  straight  to  bed,  and  get- 
ting back  into  the  dirty  garments  in  which  you 
have  traveled.  But  you  have  no  business  to 
complain.  The  "right  now"  ought  to  comfort 
[20] 


THE    SPIRIT   OF   ADVENTURE 

you.  Especially  when  it  is  repeated  cheerily, 
while  you  stand  dripping  and  embarrassed  at 
the  receiver  to  make  a  final  appeal.  The  word 
"right"  in  these  phrases  does  not  intensify,  it 
modifies,  the  immediateness  of  the  now.  This 
is  one  of  the  things  to  which  you  must  get 
accustomed  in  America.  But  it  is  a  friendly 
phrase,  offering  and  inviting  brotherliness  of 
the  most  desirable  kind.  That  it  means  no  more 
than  the  "Anon,  sir,  anon,"  of  Shakespeare's 
tapster  is  not  the  fault  of  anybody.  Some 
sacrifices  must  be  made  for  the  sake  of  friend- 
liness. 

But  taken  as  a  whole  the  American  language 
is  very  little  different  from  English.  I  imag- 
ine the  tendency  to  diverge  has  been  checked 
by  the  growing  frequency  of  intercourse  be- 
tween the  two  countries.  So  many  Americans 
come  to  England  and  so  many  English  go  to 
America  that  the  languages  are  being  reduced 
to  one  dead  level.  What  used  to  be  called 
"Americanisms"  are  current  in  common  talk 
on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  and  on  the  other 
there  is  a  regrettable  tendency  to  drop  even  the 

[21] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

fine  old  forms  which  the  English  themselves 
lost  long  ago.  "Gotten"  still  survives  in 
America  instead  of  the  degraded  "got,"  but  I 
am  afraid  it  is  losing  its  hold.  "Wheel"  is  in 
all  ways  preferable  to  bicycle,  and  may  per- 
haps become  naturalized  here.  I  cannot  imag- 
ine that  the  Americans  will  be  so  foolish  as  to 
give  it  up.  Whether  "an  automobile  ride"  is 
preferable  to  "a  drive  in  a  motor"  I  do  not 
know.  They  both  strike  me  as  vile  phrases, 
and  it  is  difficult  to  choose  between  them. 

America,  as  a  country  to  travel  in,  had  for 
us  another  attraction  besides  its  language. 
Some  people  have  relations  in  Spain  to  whom 
they  can  go  and  in  whose  houses  they  can  stay 
as  guests.  Others  have  relatives  of  the  same 
convenient  kind  in  Austria  and  even  in  Russia. 
Many  people  have  friends  in  France  and  Ger- 
many. We  are  not  so  fortunate.  When  we 
go  to  those  countries  we  spend  our  time  in 
hotels,  or  at  best  in  pensions.  We  do  not  dis- 
cover intimate  things  about  the  people  there. 
It  is  impossible  for  us  to  learn,  except  through 
books,  and  they  seldom  tell  us  the  things  we 
[22] 


THE    SPIRIT   OF   ADVENTURE 

want  to  know,  whether  the  Austrians  are  mo- 
rose or  cheerful  at  breakfast  time,  and  whether 
the  Germans  when  at  home  hate  fresh  air  as 
bitterly  as  they  hate  it  when  traveling.  And 
these  are  just  the  sort  of  things  which  it  is 
most  interesting  to  know  about  any  people. 
The  politics  of  a  foreign  country  are  more 
easily  studied  in  the  pages  of  periodicals  like 
"The  Nineteenth  Century"  than  in  the  daily 
press  of  the  country  itself.  Statistics  about 
trade  and  population  can  be  read  up  in  books 
devoted  to  the  purpose.  All  sorts  of  other  in- 
formation are  supplied  by  the  invaluable  Bae- 
deker, so  that  it  is  in  no  way  necessary  to  go  to 
Venice  in  order  to  find  out  things  about  St. 
Mark's.  But  very  intimate  details  about  the 
insides  of  houses,  domestic  manners  and  so 
forth  can  only  be  obtained  by  staying  in  pri- 
vate homes.  This  we  thought  we  might  accom- 
plish in  America  because  we  had  some  friends 
there  before  we  started.  In  reality  ready  made 
friends  are  unnecessary  for  the  traveler  in 
America.  He  makes  them  as  he  goes  along, 
for  the  Americans  are  an  amazingly  sociable 

[23] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

people  and  hospitable  beyond  all  other  nations. 
To  us  Irish— and  we  are  supposed  to  be  hospi- 
table— the  stranger  is  a  stranger  until  he  is 
shown  in  some  way  to  be  a  friend.  In  America 
he  is  regarded  as  a  friend  unless  he  makes 
himself  objectionable,  unless  he  makes  him- 
self very  objectionable  indeed.  We  heard  of 
American  hospitality  before  we  started.  We 
feel  now,  as  the  Queen  of  Sheba  felt  after  her 
visit  to  King  Solomon,  that  the  half  was  not 
told  us.  To  be  treated  hospitably  is  always  de- 
lightful. It  is  doubly  so  when  the  hospitality 
enables  the  fortunate  guest  to  learn  something 
of  a  kind  of  life  which  is  not  his  own. 

For  all  these  reasons — I  have  enumerated 
four,  I  think — we  desired  greatly  to  go  to 
America;  and  there  was  still  another  thing 
which  attracted  us.  You  cannot  go  to  America 
except  by  sea.  Even  if  you  are  seasick — and  I 
occasionally  am,  a  little — traveling  in  a  steam- 
er is  greatly  to  be  preferred  to  traveling  in  a 
train.  A  good  steamer  is  clean.  The  best 
train  covers  you  with  smuts.  The  noise  of  the 
train  is  nerve-shattering.  The  noise  which  a 
[24] 


THE    SPIRIT   OF   ADVENTURE 

steamer  makes,  even  in  a  gale,  is  soothing. 
When  a  train  stops  and  when  it  starts  again  it 
jerks  and  bumps.  It  also  runs  over  things 
called  points  and  then  it  bumps  more.  A 
steamer  stops  far  seldomer  than  a  train,  and 
does  so  very  gently  and  smoothly.  It  never 
actually  bumps,  and  though  it  very  often  rolls 
or  pitches,  it  does  these  things  in  a  dignified 
way  with  due  deliberation.  We  chose  a  slow 
steamer  for  our  voyage  out  and  if  we  are  for- 
tunate enough  to  go  to  America  again  we  shall 
choose  another  slow  steamer. 

Having  made  up  our  minds  to  go — or  rather 
since  these  things  are  really  decided  for  us  and 
we  are  never  the  masters  of  our  movements — 
having  been  shepherded  by  Destiny  into  a  trip 
to  America  we  naturally  sought  for  informa- 
tion about  that  country.  We  got  a  great  deal 
more  than  we  actually  sought.  Everyone  we 
met  gave  us  advice  and  told  us  what  to  expect. 
Advice  is  always  contradictory,  and  the  only 
wise  thing  to  do  is  to  take  none  of  what  is 
offered.  But  it  puzzled  us  to  find  that  the  ac- 
counts we  got  of  the  country  were  equally  con- 

[25] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

tradictory.  English  people,  using  a  curious 
phrase  of  which  they  seem  to  be  very  fond, 
prophesied  for  us  "the  time  of  our  lives."  They 
said  that  we  should  enjoy  ourselves  from  the 
day  we  landed  in  New  York  until  the  day  when 
we  sank  exhausted  by  too  much  joy,  a  day 
which  some  of  them  placed  a  fortnight  off, 
some  three  weeks,  all  of  them  underestimating, 
as  it  turned  out,  our  capacity  for  enduring  de- 
light. Americans  on  the  other  hand  decried  the 
country,  and  told  us  that  the  lot  of  the  traveler 
in  it  was  very  far  from  being  pleasant.  This 
puzzled  us.  A  very  modest  and  retiring  people 
might  be  expected  to  underestimate  the  attrac- 
tions of  their  own  land.  We  Irish,  for  in- 
stance, always  assert  that  it  rains  three  days  out 
of  every  four  in  Ireland.  But  the  Americans 
are  not  popularly  supposed  to  be,  and  in  fact 
are  not,  particularly  modest.  I  can  only  sup- 
pose that  the  Americans  we  met  before  we 
started  were  in  bad  tempers  because  they  were 
for  one  reason  or  another  obliged  to  stay  in 
England,  and  that  they  belittled  their  country 
[26] 


THE    SPIRIT    OF   ADVENTURE 

in  the  spirit  of  the  fox  who  said  the  grapes 
were  sour. 

One  piece  of  advice  which  we  got  gave  us, 
incidentally  and  accidentally,  our  first  glimpse 
at  one  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  American 
people,  their  hatred  of  letter  writing  as  a  means 
of  communication.     The  advice  was  this: 

"Do  not  attempt  to  take  a  sealskin  coat  into 
America,  because  there  is  a  law  there  against 
sealskin  coats  and  the  Custom  House  officers 
will  hold  up  the  garment." 

This  seemed  to  us  very  improbable.  I  re- 
membered the  song  I  have  already  quoted 
about  the  "Land  of  the  Free"  and  could  not 
bring  myself  to  believe  that  a  great  nation,  a 
nation  that  had  fought  an  expensive  war  in 
order  to  set  its  slaves  at  liberty,  could  possibly 
want  to  interfere  with  the  wearing  apparel  of 
a  casual  stranger.  The  Law,  which  is  very 
great  and  majestic  everywhere,  is,  according 
to  the  proverb,  indifferent  to  very  small  mat- 
ters. America,  which  is  as  great  and  majestic 
as  any  law,  could  not  possibly  be  supposed  to 
concern  itself  with  the  material  of  a  woman's 

[27] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

coat.  So  we  reasoned.  But  the  warning  was 
given  with  authority  by  one  who  knew  a  lady 
who  had  tried  to  bring  a  sealskin  coat  into 
America  and  failed.  We  thought  it  well  to 
make  sure.  An  inquiry  at  the  steamboat  office 
was  useless.  The  clerk  there  declined  to  say 
anything  either  good  or  bad  about  the  Ameri- 
can Custom  House  regulations.  I  have  no- 
ticed this  same  kind  of  cautious  reticence 
among  all  Americans  when  the  subject  of  cus- 
toms comes  up.  I  imagine  that  the  people  of 
ancient  Crete  avoided  speaking  about  that  god 
of  theirs  who  ate  young  girls,  and  for  the  same 
reason.  There  is  no  use  running  risks,  and 
the  American  Custom  House  officer  is  a  per- 
son whom  it  is  not  well  to  offend.  This  is  the 
way  with  all  democracies.  In  Russia  and  Ger- 
many a  man  has  to  be  careful  in  speaking  about 
the  Czar  or  the  Kaiser.  In  republics  we  shut 
our  mouths  when  a  minor  official  is  mentioned, 
unless  we  are  among  tried  and  trusted  friends. 
I  myself  dislike  respecting  any  one;  but  if  re- 
spect is  exacted  of  me  I  should  rather  yield  it 
to  a  king  with  a  proper  crown  on  his  head  than 
[28] 


THE    SPIRIT   OF   ADVENTURE 

to  an  ordinary  man  done  up  with  brass  buttons. 
However,  Anglo-Saxons  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic  seem  to  like  doing  obeisance  to  offi- 
cials, and  their  tastes  are  no  affairs  of  mine. 

Having  failed  in  the  steamboat  office,  I 
wrote  a  letter  to  a  high  American  official  in 
England — not  the  Ambassador.  I  did  not 
like  to  trouble  him  about  a  sealskin  coat.  An 
English  official,  high,  or  of  middling  station, 
would  have  answered  me  by  return  of  post, 
because  he  is  glad  of  an  opportunity  of  writing 
a  letter.  In  fact,  he  likes  writing  letters  so 
much  that  he  would  have  sent  me  two  answers, 
the  first  a  brief  but  courteous  acknowledgment 
of  my  letter  and  an  assurance  that  it  was  re- 
ceiving attention;  the  second  an  extract  from 
the  Act  of  Parliament  which  dealt  with  my 
particular  problem.  The  American  official  does 
not  like  writing  letters.  No  American  does. 
Rather  than  write  a  letter,  an  American  will 
pursue  you,  viva  voce,  over  hundreds  of  miles 
of  telephone  wire,  or  spend  an  hour  of  valuable 
time  in  having  an  interview  with  you  in  some 
more  or  less  inaccessible  place.    Not  even  pro- 

[29] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

motion  to  a  high  official  position  will  cause  an 
American  to  feel  kindly  toward  a  pen.  The 
official  to  whom  I  wrote  would,  I  am  sure,  have 
told  me  all  there  is  to  know  about  the  Ameri- 
can dislike  of  sealskin  coats,  if  he  could  have 
got  me  on  a  telephone.  He  could  not  do  that, 
because  my  name  is  not  in  the  London  tele- 
phone directory.  He  would,  although  he  is  a 
most  important  person  and  I  am  less  than  the 
least,  have  come  to  me  and  talked  face  to  face 
if  he  had  known  where  to  find  me ;  but  I  wrote 
from  a  club,  and  the  chances  were  five  to  one 
at  least  against  his  finding  me  there.  There 
was  nothing  for  it  but  to  write  a  letter;  but  it 
took  him  several  days  to  make  up  his  mind  to 
the  effort.  His  answer,  when  he  did  write  it, 
followed  me  to  New  York,  and  the  sealskin 
coat  problem  had  solved  itself  then. 

I  noticed,  when  in  New  York,  that  it  takes 
a  posted  letter  much  longer  to  get  from  one 
street  in  that  city  to  another  quite  near  at  hand 
than  it  does  in  London  for  a  letter  posted  in 
the  same  way  to  get  from  Denmark  Hill  to 
Hampstead.  I  connect  this  fact  with  the  dis- 
[30] 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ADVENTURE 

like  of  letter-writing  which  is  prevalent  among 
Americans.  But  I  do  not  know  which  is  cause 
and  which  is  effect.  It  may  be  that  the  Amer- 
ican avoids  letters  because  he  knows  that  they 
will  go  to  their  destination  very  slowly.  It 
may  be,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  American 
post-office  has  dropped  into  leisurely  ways  be- 
cause it  knows  that  it  is  seldom  used  for  busi- 
ness purposes.  Love  letters  it  carries,  no  doubt, 
for  it  is  difficult  to  express  tender  feelings  on 
a  telephone,  and  impossible  to  telegraph  them ; 
but  love  letters  are  hardly  ever  urgent.  The 
"Collins"  or  "Hospitable  Roof"  communica- 
tion must  be  a  letter  and  must  go  through  the 
post,  but  the  writer  and  the  recipient  would 
both  be  better  pleased  if  it  never  arrived  at 
all.  Business  letters  are  different  things,  and 
I  am  sure  the  American  post-office  carries  com- 
paratively few  of  them. 

I  wish  that  some  one  with  a  taste  for  statis- 
tics would  make  out  a  table  of  the  weights  of 
the  mail  bags  carried  on  Cunard  steamers.  I 
am  convinced,  and  nothing  but  statistics  will 
make  me  think  differently,  that  the  westward 

[31] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

bound  ships  carry  far  more  letters  than  those 
which  travel  eastward.  All  Englishmen,  ex- 
cept for  obvious  reasons  English  journalists, 
write  letters  whenever  they  have  a  decent  ex- 
cuse. Americans  only  write  letters  when  they 
must.  It  was,  I  think,  the  late  Charles  Stew- 
art Parnell  who  observed  that  most  letters  an- 
swered themselves  if  you  leave  them  alone  long 
enough.  This  is  profoundly  true,  although 
Englishmen  do  not  believe  it.  I  have  tried 
and  I  know.  Americans  have  either  come 
across  Parneirs  remark  or  worked  out  the  same 
truth  for  themselves.  I  applaud  their  wisdom, 
but  I  was  once  sorry  that  they  practice  this 
form  of  economy.  If  we  had  got  an  answer 
to  our  letter  before  we  sailed,  we  should  have 
left  the  coat  behind  us.  As  it  was,  we  took 
the  coat  with  us  and  carried  it  about  America, 
giving  ourselves  indeed  a  good  deal  of  trouble 
and  reaping  very  little  in  the  way  of  comfort 
or  credit  by  having  it.  When  we  did  get  the 
letter  it  showed  us  that  the  Americans  really 
do  object  strongly  to  these  coats  and  have 
made  a  law  against  them.  If  we  had  known 
[32] 


THE    SPIRIT   OF   ADVENTURE 

that  before  starting,  we  should  have  left  the 
coat  behind  us  at  any  cost  to  our  feelings. 

We  are  not  aggressive  people,  either  of  us, 
and  we  always  try  to  conform  to  the  customs 
of  the  country  in  which  we  are,  and  to  respect 
the  feelings  of  the  inhabitants.  We  cannot, 
indeed,  afford  to  do  anything  else.  Members 
of  powerful,  conquering  nations  go  about  the 
world  insisting  on  having  their  own  way  wher- 
ever they  are.  The  English,  for  instance,  have 
spread  the  practice  of  drinking  tea  in  the  after- 
noon all  over  Europe.  They  make  it  under- 
stood that  wherever  they  go  afternoon  tea  must 
be  obtainable.  Other  peoples  shrug  their  shoul- 
ders and  give  in.  The  Americans  have  in- 
sisted that  hotels  shall  be  centrally  heated  and 
all  rooms  and  passages  kept  up  to  a  very  high 
temperature.  No  one  else  wants  this  kind  of 
heat,  and  until  the  Americans  took  to  traveling 
in  large  numbers  we  were  all  content  with  fire- 
places in  rooms  and  chilly  corridors.  But  the 
Americans  are  a  great  people,  and  there  is 
hardly  a  first-rate  hotel  left  in  Europe  now 
which  has  not  got  a  system  of  central  heating 

[33] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

installed.  The  French  have  secured  the  use  of 
their  language,  or  a  colorable  imitation  of  their 
language,  on  all  menu  cards  and  bills  of  fare. 
No  self-respecting  maitre  d'hotel,  even  if  90% 
of  his  patrons  are  Americans,  English  and 
Germans,  would  dare  to  call  soup  anything  ex- 
cept potage  or  consomme.  I  think  we  owe  it 
to  the  Russians  that  ladies  can  now  smoke 
cigarettes  without  reproach  in  all  European 
restaurants,  though  they  cannot  do  this  yet  in 
America  because  very  few  Russians  of  the 
tourist  classes  go  to  America.  It  must  be  very 
gratifying  to  belong  to  one  of  these  great  na- 
tions and  to  be  able  to  import  a  favorite  cus- 
tom or  a  valued  comfort  wherever  you  go. 
We  are  mere  Irish.  We  have  never  conquered 
any  one  ourselves,  although  we  are  rather  good 
at  winning  other  people's  battles  for  them. 
We  have  not  money  enough  to  make  it  worth 
anybody's  while  to  consider  our  tastes;  nor, 
indeed,  are  we  sure  enough  of  ourselves  to 
insist  on  having  our  own  way.  There  is  al- 
ways at  the  backs  of  our  minds  the  paralyzing 
thought  that  perhaps  the  other  people  may  be 
[34] 


THE    SPIRIT    OF   ADVENTURE 

right  and  we  may  be  wrong.     We  submit 
rather  than  struggle. 

We  like,  for  instance,  good  tea  at  break- 
fast, strong  dark  brown  tea,  which  leaves  a 
distinct  stain  on  the  inside  of  the  cup  out  of 
which  we  drink  it.  Nobody  else  in  the  world 
likes  this  kind  of  tea.  If  we  were  a  conquer- 
ing, domineering  people,  we  should  go  about 
Europe  and  America  saying:  "This  which  we 
drink  is  tea.  Your  miserable  concoction  is  slop 
or  worse."  If  we  were  rich  enough  and  if 
large  numbers  of  us  traveled,  we  should  es- 
tablish our  kind  of  tea  as  an  institution.  It 
would  be  obtainable  everywhere.  At  first  it 
would  be  called  "The  a  VIrlandaise"  and  we 
should  get  it  by  asking  for  it.  Afterwards 
it  would  be  "the"  simply,  and  if  a  traveler 
wanted  anything  else  he  would  have  to  ask  for 
that  by  some  special  name.  But  we  are  not 
that  kind  of  people.  There  are  not  enough  of 
us,  and  the  few  there  are  have  not  sufficient 
money  to  make  them  worth  considering.  Be- 
sides, we  are  never  self-confident  enough  to  as- 
sert that  our  kind  of  tea  is  the  true  and 

[35] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

superior  kind.  We  are  uneasily  conscious  that 
it  is  rude  to  describe  other  people's  favorite 
beverages  as  "slop"  even  when  they  call  ours 
"poison."  And  there  is  always  the  doubt 
whether  we  may  not  be  wrong,  after  all.  Great 
peoples  do  not  suffer  from  this  doubt.  The 
American  is  perfectly  certain  that  houses  ought 
to  be  centrally  heated.  To  him  there  does  not 
seem  to  be  any  possibility  of  arguing  about 
that.  He  has  discovered  a  universal  truth, 
and  the  rest  of  the  world  must  learn  it  from 
him. 

The  German  is  equally  sure  that  fresh  air  in 
a  railway  carriage  brings  death  to  the  person 
who  breathes  it.  He  is  as  certain  about  that 
as  he  is  that  water  wets  him  when  it  is  poured 
over  him.  There  is  no  room  for  discussion. 
But  we  Irish  are  differently  constituted.  When 
any  one  tells  us  that  our  type  of  tea  reduces 
those  who  drink  it  to  the  condition  of  nervous 
wrecks  and  ultimately  drives  them  into  lunatic 
asylums,  we  wonder  whether  perhaps  he  may 
not  be  right.  It  is  true  that  we  have  drunk 
the  stuff  for  years  and  felt  no  bad  effects ;  but 
[36] 


THE    SPIRIT   OF   ADVENTURE 

there  is  always  "the  plaguy  hundredth  chance" 
that  the  bad  effects  may  have  been  there  all 
the  time  without  our  noticing  them,  and  that, 
though  we  seem  sane,  we  may  be  jibbering  im- 
beciles. Thus  it  is  that  we  never  have  the  heart 
to  make  any  real  struggle  for  strong  tea. 

This  same  infirmity  would  have  prevented 
our  dragging  that  coat  into  America  if  we 
had  found  out  in  time  that  sealskin  coats  strike 
Americans  as  wicked  things.  To  us  it  seems 
plain  that  seals  exist  mainly  for  the  purpose 
of  supplying  men,  and  especially  women,  with 
skins;  just  as  fathers  have  their  place  among 
created  things  in  order  to  supply  money  for 
the  use  of  their  children,  or  steam  in  order 
that  it  may  make  engines  work.  Left  to  our- 
selves, we  should  accept  all  these  as  final  truths 
and  live  in  the  light  of  them.  But  the  moment 
any  one  assails  them  with  a  flat  contradiction 
we  begin  to  doubt.  The  American  says  that 
the  seal,  at  all  events  the  seal  that  has  the  luck 
to  live  in  Hudson  Bay,  ought  not  to  be 
deprived  of  his  skin,  and  that  men  and 
women  must  be  content  with  their  own  skins, 

[37] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

supplemented  when  necessary  by  the  fleeces  of 
sheep. 

The  Englishman  or  the  German  would 
stand  up  to  the  American. 

"I  will,"  one  of  them  would  say,  "kill  a  Hud- 
son Bay  seal  if  I  like  or  have  him  killed  for 
me  by  some  one  else.  I  will  wear  his  skin 
unless  you  prevent  me  by  actual  force,  and  I 
will  resist  your  force  as  long  as  I  can." 

We  do  not  adopt  that  attitude.  We  cannot, 
for  the  spirit  of  defiance  is  not  in  us.  When 
we  were  assured,  as  we  were  in  the  end,  that 
the  American  really  has  strong  feelings  about 
seals,  we  began  to  think  that  he  might  be  right. 

"America,"  so  we  argued,  "is  a  much  larger 
country  than  Ireland.  It  is  much  richer.  The 
buildings  in  its  cities  are  far  higher.  Who  are 
we  that  we  should  set  up  our  opinions  about 
tea  or  skins  or  anything  else  against  the 
settled  convictions  of  so  great  a  people?" 

Therefore,  though  we  brought  our  coat  into 

America,  we  did  so  in  no  spirit  of  defiance. 

Once  we  found  out  the  truth,  we  concealed  the 

coat  as  much  as  possible,  carrying  it  about 

[38] 


THE    SPIRIT   OF   ADVENTURE 

folded  up  so  that  only  the  lining  showed.  It 
was  hardly  ever  worn,  only  twice,  I  think,  the 
whole  time  we  were  there.  The  weather,  in- 
deed, was  as  a  rule  particularly  warm  for  that 
season  of  the  year. 


[39] 


CHAPTER   II 

PRESSMEN    AND    POLITICIANS 

Our  ship,  after  a  prosperous  and  pleasant 
voyage,  steamed  up  the  Hudson  River  in  a 
blinding  downpour  of  rain  which  drove  steadily 
across  the  decks.  Our  clothes  had  been  packed 
up  since  very  early  in  the  morning,  and  we 
declined  to  get  soaked  to  the  skin  when  there 
was  no  chance  of  our  being  able  to  get  dry 
again  for  several  hours.  Therefore,  we  missed 
seeing  the  Statue  of  Liberty  and  the  Wool- 
worth  Building.  We  were  cowards,  and  we 
suffered  for  our  cowardice  by  losing  what 
little  respect  our  American  fellow  travelers 
may  have  had  for  us.  They  went  out  in  the 
rain  to  gaze  at  the  Statue  of  Liberty  and  the 
Woolworth  Building.  We  saw  nothing 
through  the  cabin  windows  except  an  adver- 
tisement of  Colgate's  tooth  paste.  The  Wool- 
worth  Building  we  did  indeed  see  later  on. 
[40] 


PRESSMEN   AND    POLITICIANS 

The  Statue  of  Liberty  we  never  saw  at  all.  I 
could  of  course  write  eloquently  about  it  with- 
out having  seen  it.  Many  people  do  things  of 
this  kind,  but  I  desire  to  be  perfectly  honest. 
I  leave  out  the  Statue  of  Liberty.  I  am  per- 
fectly sure  it  is  there;  but  beyond  that  fact  I 
know  nothing  whatever  about  it. 

We  actually  landed,  set  foot  at  last  on  the 
soil  of  the  new  world,  a  little  before  8  a.m., 
which  is  a  detestable  hour  of  the  day  under 
any  circumstances,  and  particularly  abomi- 
nable in  a  downpour  of  rain.  If  a  stranger 
with  whom  I  was  very  slightly  acquainted 
were  to  land  at  that  hour  in  Dublin,  and  if  it 
were  raining  as  hard  there  as  it  did  that  morn- 
ing in  New  York — it  never  does,  but  it  is  con- 
ceivable that  it  might — I  should  no  more  think 
of  going  to  meet  him  at  the  quay  than  I  should 
think  of  swimming  out  a  mile  or  two  to  wave 
my  hand  at  his  ship  as  she  passed.  A  year 
ago  I  should  have  made  this  confession  with- 
out the  smallest  shame.  It  would  not  have 
occurred  to  me  as  possible  that  I  should  make 
such  an  expedition.     If  a  very  honored  guest 

[41] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

arrived  at  a  reasonable  hour  and  at  an  acces- 
sible place — steamboat  quays  are  never  acces- 
sible anywhere  in  the  world — if  the  day  were 
fine  and  I  had  nothing  particular  to  do,  I 
might  perhaps  go  to  meet  that  guest,  and  I 
should  expect  him  to  be  surprised  and  grati- 
fied. I  now  confess  this  with  shame,  and  I 
intend  to  reform  my  habits.  I  blush  hotly 
when  I  think  of  the  feelings  of  Americans  who 
come  to  visit  us.  They  behave  very  much  bet- 
ter than  we  do  to  strangers.  There  were  three 
people  to  meet  us  that  morning  when  we  landed 
and  two  others  arrived  at  the  quay  almost 
immediately  afterwards.  Of  the  five  there 
was  only  one  whom  I  had  ever  seen  before,  and 
him  no  oftener  than  twice.  Yet  they  were 
there  to  shake  our  hands  in  warm  welcome,  to 
help  us  in  every  conceivable  way,  to  whisper 
advice  when  advice  seemed  necessary. 

There  were  also  newspaper  reporters,  inter- 
viewers, and  we  had  our  first  experience  of 
that  business  as  the  Americans  do  it,  in  the 
shed  where  our  baggage  was  examined  by  Cus- 
tom House  officers. 
[42] 


PRESSMEN   AND    POLITICIANS 

"Don't,"  said  one  of  my  friends,  "say  more 
than  you  can  help  about  religion." 

The  warning  seemed  to  me  unnecessary.  I 
value  my  religion,  not  as  much  as  I  ought  to, 
but  highly.  Still  it  is  not  a  subject  which  I 
should  voluntarily  discuss  at  eight  o'clock  in 
the  morning  in  a  shed  with  rain  splashing  on 
the  roof.  The  very  last  thing  I  should  dream 
of  offering  a  newspaper  reporter  is  a  formal 
proof  of  any  of  the  articles  of  the  Apostle's 
Creed.  Nor  would  any  interviewer  whom  I 
ever  met  care  to  listen  to  a  sermon.  I  was 
on  the  point  of  resenting  the  advice;  but  I 
reflected  in  time  that  it  was  certainly  meant  for 
my  good  and  that  the  ways  of  the  American 
interviewer  were  strange  to  me.  He  might 
want  to  find  out  whether  I  could  say  my  cate- 
chism. I  thanked  my  friend  and  promised  to 
mention  religion  as  little  as  possible.  I  confess 
that  the  warning  made  me  nervous. 

"What,"  I  whispered,  "are  they  likely  to 
ask  me?" 

"Well,  what  you  think  of  America,  for  one 
thing.    They  always  begin  with  that." 

[43] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

I  had  been  told  that  before  I  left  home.  I 
had  even  been  advised  by  an  experienced  trav- 
eler to  jot  down,  during  the  voyage  out,  all 
the  things  I  thought  about  America,  and  have 
them  ready  on  slips  of  paper  to  hand  to  the 
interviewers  when  I  arrived.  This  plan,  I  was 
assured,  would  save  me  trouble  and  would  give 
the  Americans  a  high  opinion  of  my  business 
ability.  I  took  the  advice.  I  had  quite  a  num- 
ber of  excellent  remarks  about  America  ready 
in  my  pocket  when  I  landed.  They  were  no 
use  to  me.  Not  one  single  interviewer  asked 
me  that  question.  Not  even  the  one  who  chat- 
ted with  me  in  the  evening  of  the  day  on  which 
I  left  for  home.  I  do  not  know  why  I  was  not 
asked  this  question.  Every  other  stranger  who 
goes  to  America  is  asked  it,  or  at  all  events  says 
he  is  asked  it.  Perhaps  the  Americans  have 
ceased  to  care  what  any  stranger  thinks  about 
them.  Perhaps  they  were  uninterested  only 
in  my  opinion.     I  can  understand  that. 

Nor  was  I  tempted  or  goaded  to  talk  about 
religion.  The  warning  which  I  got  to  avoid 
that  subject  was  wasted.  No  one  seemed  to 
[44] 


PRESSMEN   AND   POLITICIANS 

care  what  I  believed.  I  do  not  think  I  should 
have  startled  the  very  youngest  interviewer  if 
I  had  confided  to  him  that  I  believed  nothing 
at  all.  The  nearest  I  ever  got  to  religion  in  an 
interview  was  when  I  was  asked  what  I  thought 
about  Ulster  and  Home  Rule.  That  I  was 
asked  frequently,  almost  as  frequently  as  I  was 
asked  what  I  thought  of  Synge's  "Playboy  of 
the  Western  World";  and  both  these  seemed 
to  me  just  the  sort  of  questions  I  ought  to  be 
asked,  if,  indeed,  I  ought  to  be  asked  any 
questions  at  all.  I  do  not,  indeed  cannot,  think 
about  Ulster  and  Home  Rule.  Nobody  can. 
It  is  one  of  those  things,  like  the  fourth  dimen- 
sion, which  baffle  human  thought.  Just  as  you 
hope  that  you  have  got  it  into  a  thinkable  shape 
it  eludes  you  and  you  see  it  sneering  at  your 
discomfiture  from  the  far  side  of  the  last  ditch. 
But  it  was  quite  right  and  proper  to  expect 
that  an  Irishman,  especially  an  Irishman  who 
came  originally  from  Belfast,  would  have 
something  to  say  about  it,  some  thought  to  ex- 
press which  would  illuminate  the  morass  of 
that  controversy.    I  could  not  complain  about 

[45] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

being  asked  that  question.  I  ought  to  have 
had  something  to  say  about  Synge's  play,  too, 
but  I  had  not.  I  think  it  is  a  wonderful  play, 
by  far  the  greatest  piece  of  dramatic  liter- 
ature that  Ireland  has  produced;  but  I  cannot 
give  any  reasons  for  the  faith  that  is  in  me. 
Therefore,  I  am  afraid  I  must  have  been  a 
most  unsatisfactory  subject  for  the  interview- 
ers.   They  cannot  possibly  have  liked  me. 

I,  on  the  other  hand,  liked  them  very  much 
indeed.  I  found  them  delightful  to  talk  to, 
and  look  back  on  the  hours  I  spent  with  them 
as  some  of  the  most  interesting  of  my  whole 
American  trip.  They  all,  without  exception, 
seemed  to  want  to  be  pleasant.  They  were  the 
least  conceited  set  of  people  I  ever  came  across 
and  generally  apologized  for  coming  to  see 
me.  The  apologies  were  entirely  unnecessary. 
Their  visits  were  favors  conferred  on  me. 
They  were  strictly  honorable.  When,  as  very 
often  happened,  I  said  something  particularly 
foolish  and  became  conscious  of  the  fact,  I 
used  to  ask  the  interviewer  to  whom  I  had  said 
it  not  to  put  it  in  print.  He  always  promised 
[46] 


PRESSMEN   AND    POLITICIANS 

to  suppress  it  and  he  always  kept  his  promise, 
though  my  sillinesses  must  often  have  offered 
attractive  copy.  Nor  did  any  interviewer  ever 
misrepresent  me,  except  when  he  failed  to  un- 
derstand what  I  said,  and  that  must  always 
have  been  more  my  fault  than  his.  At  first  I 
used  to  be  very  cautious  with  interviewers  and 
made  no  statements  of  any  kind  without  hedg- 
ing. I  used  to  shy  at  topics  which  seemed  dan- 
gerous, and  trot  away  as  quickly  as  I  could  to 
something  which  offered  opportunity  for 
platitudes.  I  gradually  came  to  realize  that 
this  caution  was  unnecessary.  I  would  talk 
confidently  now  to  an  American  interviewer 
on  any  subject,  even  religion,  for  I  know  he 
would  not  print  anything  which  I  thought 
likely  to  get  me  into  trouble. 

I  cannot  understand  how  it  is  that  Ameri- 
can interviewers  have  such  a  bad  reputation 
on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  They  are  a  highly 
intelligent,  well-educated  body  of  men  and 
women  engaged  in  the  particularly  difficult 
job  of  trying  to  get  stupid  people,  like  me, 
or  conceited  people  to  say  something  interest- 

[47] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

ing.  They  never  made  any  attempt  to  pry 
into  my  private  affairs.  They  never  asked 
obviously  silly  questions.  I  have  heard  of 
people  who  resorted  to  desperate  expedients 
to  avoid  interviewers  in  America.  I  should  as 
soon  think  of  trying  to  avoid  a  good  play  or 
any  other  agreeable  form  of  entertainment. 
After  all,  there  is  no  entertainment  so  pleas- 
ant as  conversation  with  a  clever  man  or 
woman.  I  have  heard  of  people  who  were  de- 
liberately rude  to  interviewers  and  gloried  in 
their  rudeness  afterwards.  That  seems  to  me 
just  as  grave  a  breach  of  manners  as  to  say 
insolent  things  to  a  host  or  hostess  at  a  dinner 
party. 

Every  now  and  then  an  interviewer,  using  a 
very  slender  foundation  of  fact,  produces 
something  which  is  brilliantly  amusing.  There 
was  one,  with  whom  I  never  came  into  per- 
sonal contact  at  all,  who  published  a  version 
of  a  conversation  between  Miss  Maire  O'Neill 
and  me.  What  we  actually  said  to  each  other 
was  dull  enough.  The  interviewer,  by  the 
simple  expedient  of  making  us  talk  after  the 
[48] 


PRESSMEN   AND    POLITICIANS 

fashion  which  "Mr.  Dooley"  has  made  popu- 
lar, represented  us  as  exceedingly  interesting 
and  amusing  people.  No  one  but  a  fool  would 
resent  being  flattered  after  this  fashion. 

The  one  thing  which  puzzles  me  about  the 
business  is  why  the  public  wants  it  done.  It  is 
pleasant  enough  for  the  hero  of  the  occasion, 
and  it  is  only  affectation  to  call  him  a  victim. 
The  man  who  does  the  work,  the  interviewer, 
is,  I  suppose,  paid.  He  ought  to  be  paid  very 
highly.  But  where  does  the  public  come  in? 
It  reads  the  interview — we  must,  I  think,  take 
it  for  granted  that  somebody  reads  interviews, 
but  it  is  very  difficult  to  imagine  why.  The 
American  public,  judging  from  the  number  of 
interviews  published,  seems  particularly  fond 
of  this  kind  of  reading.  Yet,  however  clever 
the  interviewer,  the  thing  must  be  dull  in  nine 
cases  out  of  ten. 

My  first  interviewer,  my  very  first,  photo- 
graphed me.  I  told  him  that  he  was  wasting 
a  plate,  but  he  went  on  and  wasted  three.  Why 
did  he  do  it?  If  I  were  a  very  beautiful 
woman  I  could  understand  it,  though  I  think 

[49] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

it  would  be  a  mistake  to  photograph  Venus 
herself  on  the  gangway  of  a  steamer  at  eight 
o'clock  in  the  morning  in  a  downpour  of  rain. 
If  I  had  been  a  Christian  missionary  who  had 
been  tortured  by  Chinese,  I  could  understand 
it.  Tortures  might  have  left  surprising  marks 
on  my  face  or  twisted  my  spine  in  an  inter- 
esting way.  If  I  had  been  an  apostle  of  physi- 
cal culture,  dressed  in  a  pair  of  bathing  draw- 
ers and  part  of  a  tiger  skin,  the  photograph- 
ing would  have  been  intelligible.  But  I  am 
none  of  these  things.  What  pleasure  could  the 
public  be  expected  to  find  in  the  reproduction 
of  a  picture  of  a  common  place  middle-aged 
man?  Yet  the  thing  was  done.  I  can  only 
suppose  that  reading  interviews  and  looking 
at  the  attendant  photographs  has  become  a 
habit  with  the  American  public,  just  as  carry- 
ing a  walking  stick  has  with  the  English  gen- 
tleman. A  walking  stick  is  no  real  use  ex- 
cept to  a  lame  man.  The  walker  does  not  push 
himself  along  with  it.  He  does  not,  when  he 
sets  out  from  home,  expect  to  meet  any  one 
whom  he  wants  to  hit.  It  cannot  be  contended 
[50] 


PRESSMEN   AND    POLITICIANS 

that  the  stick  is  ornamental  or  adds  in  any- 
way to  the  beauty  of  his  appearance.  He  car- 
ries it  because  he  always  does  carry  it  and 
would  feel  strange  if  he  did  not.  The  Ameri- 
cans put  up  with  interviews  in  their  papers  for 
the  same  sort  of  reason.  After  all,  no  one, 
least  of  all  the  subject,  has  any  right  to  com- 
plain. 

Those  were  our  two  first  impressions  of 
America,  that  it  was  a  country  of  boundless 
hospitality  and  a  country  pervaded  by  agree- 
able newspaper  men.  I  am  told  by  those  who 
make  a  study  of  such  things  that  the  first 
glance  you  get  at  a  face  tells  you  something 
true  and  reliable  about  the  man  or  woman  it 
belongs  to,  but  that  you  get  no  further  infor- 
mation by  looking  at  the  face  day  after  day 
for  months.  When  you  come  to  know  the  man 
or  woman  really  well,  and  have  studied  his 
actions  and  watched  his  private  life  closely  for 
years,  you  find,  if  you  still  recollect  what  it 
was,  that  your  first  impression  was  right.  I 
knew  an  Englishman  once  who  lived  for  ten 
years  in  Ireland  and  was  deeply  interested  in 

[51] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

our  affairs.  He  told  me  that  when  he  had 
been  a  week  in  the  country  he  understood  it, 
understood  us  and  all  belonging  to  us  thor- 
oughly. At  the  end  of  three  months  he  began 
to  doubt  whether  he  understood  us  quite  as 
well  as  he  thought.  After  five  years  he  was 
sure  he  did  not  understand  us  at  all.  After 
ten  years — he  was  a  persevering  man — he  be- 
gan to  understand  us  a  little,  and  was  inclined 
to  think  he  was  getting  back  to  the  exact  po- 
sition he  held  at  the  end  of  the  first  week.  Ten 
years  hence,  if  he  and  I  live  so  long,  I  intend 
to  ask  him  again  what  he  thinks  about  Ire- 
land. Then,  I  expect,  he  will  tell  me  that  he 
is  quite  convinced  that  his  earliest  impressions 
were  correct.  This  is  my  justification  for  re- 
cording my  first  impressions  of  America.  I 
hope  to  get  to  know  the  country  much  better  as 
years  go  on.  I  shall  probably  pass  through 
the  stage  of  laughing  at  my  earliest  ideas,  but 
in  the  end  I  confidently  expect  to  get  back  to 
my  joyous  admiration  for  American  hospital- 
ity and  my  warm  affection  for  American  jour- 
nalists. 
[52] 


PRESSMEN   AND   POLITICIANS 

Almost  immediately — certainly  before  the 
end  of  our  second  day — we  arrived  at  the  con- 
clusion that  New  York  was  a  singularly  clean 
city.  We  are,  both  of  us,  by  inclination  dwell- 
ers in  country  places.  The  noise  of  great  towns 
worries  us.  The  sense  of  being  closely  sur- 
rounded by  large  numbers  of  other  people 
annoys  us.  But  we  should  no  doubt  get  used 
to  these  things  if  we  were  forced  to  dwell  long 
in  any  city.  I  am,  however,  certain  that  I 
should  always  loathe  the  dirt  of  cities.  The 
dirt  of  the  country,  good  red  mud,  or  the  slime 
of  wet  stems  of  trees,  does  not  trouble  me,  even 
if  I  am  covered  with  it.  I  enjoy  the  dirt  of 
quiet  harbors,  fish  scales,  dabs  of  tar  and  rust 
off  old  anchor  chains.  I  am  happier  when 
these  things  are  clinging  to  me  than  when  I  am 
free  of  them.  I  am  no  fanatical  worshipper 
of  cleanliness.  I  do  not  rank  it,  as  the  Eng- 
lish proverb  does,  among  the  minor  divinities 
of  the  world.  But  I  do  not  like,  I  thoroughly 
detest,  the  dirt  of  cities,  that  impalpable  grime 
which  settles  down  visibly  on  face,  hands,  col- 
lar, cuffs,  and  invisibly  but  sensibly  on  coats, 

[53] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

hats  and  trousers.  New  York,  of  all  the  cities 
I  have  ever  been  in,  is  freest  of  this  grime. 
You  can  open  your  bedroom  window  at  night 
in  New  York,  and  the  pocket  handkerchief  you 
leave  on  your  dressing  table  will  still  be  white 
in  the  morning,  fairly  white.  You  can  walk 
about  New  York  all  day  and  your  nose  will 
not  be  covered  with  smuts  in  the  evening.  I 
am  told  that  the  cleanness  of  New  York  is 
partly  due  to  the  fact  that  trains  running  in 
and  out  of  the  city  are  forced  by  the  municipal 
authorities  to  use  electricity  as  a  motive  power 
and  are  forbidden  to  burn  coal  till  they  get 
into  the  country.  I  am  told  that  only  a  hard, 
comparatively  smokeless  coal  may  be  burned  by 
any  one  in  the  city.  If  these  things  are  true, 
then  the  City  Fathers  of  New  York  ought  to 
be  held  up  as  a  pattern  to  Town  Councillors 
and  corporations  all  over  the  world. 

As  a  matter  of  fact — such  is  the  injustice  of 
man — the  municipal  government  of  New  York 
is  not  very  greatly  admired  by  the  rest  of  the 
world.  It  is  supposed  to  be  singularly  cor- 
rupt, and  my  fellow  countrymen  are  blamed 
[54] 


PRESSMEN   AND    POLITICIANS 

for  its  corruptness.  When  an  European  city- 
feels  in  a  pharisaical  mood  it  says:  "Thank 
God  I  am  not  as  other  cities  are,  even  as  this 
New  York."  European  cities  may  he  morally 
cleaner.  I  do  not  know  whether  they  are  or 
not.  They  are  certainly  physically  much  dirt- 
ier. And  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  or- 
dinary citizen  physical  dirt  is  more  continu- 
ously annoying  than  the  moral  kind.  If  I 
lived  in  a  community  whose  rulers  openly  sold 
contracts  and  offices,  I  should  break  out  into 
a  violent  rage  once  a  year  or  so,  and  swear  that 
I  would  no  longer  pay  taxes  for  the  benefit  of 
minor  politicians  and  their  henchmen.  All  the 
rest  of  the  year  I  should  be  placid  enough,  for 
I  should  forget  the  corruption  if  I  escaped  the 
perpetual  unpleasantness  of  dirt,  city  dirt.  No 
government,  after  all,  is  honest.  The  most 
that  can  be  expected  from  men  placed  in  au- 
thority is  that  they  should  not  outrage  public 
opinion  by  flaunting  their  dishonesty.  But  I 
cannot  help  feeling  that  men  in  authority, 
whom  after  all  the  rest  of  us  pay,  should  do 
their  business,  and  part  of  their  business  is  to 

[55] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

keep  smuts  away  from  our  faces.  If  it  is 
really  true  that  we  Irish  govern  New  York, 
then  men  ought  to  give  up  speaking  of  us  as 
"the  dirty  Irish."  Dirty!  It  appears  that  we 
are  the  only  people  who  have  ever  kept  a  city 
clean.    I  wish  we  could  do  it  at  home. 

This  Irish  political  corruption  in  New  York 
is  a  very  interesting  thing,  and  I  tried  hard  to 
arrive  at  some  understanding  of  it.  Tammany 
was  defeated  while  we  were  in  New  York,  and 
Mr.  Mitchel  became  Mayor,  promising  a  clean, 
morally  clean,  administration.  He  also  is  of 
Irish  descent,  so  that  there  were  countrymen 
of  ours  on  both  sides  in  the  struggle,  and  we 
are,  evidently,  not  all  of  us  lovers  of  corrup- 
tion. The  scene  in  Broadway  when  the  defeat 
of  Tammany  was  announced  surpassed  any- 
thing I  have  ever  beheld  in  the  way  of  a  demon- 
stration of  popular  rejoicing,  except  perhaps 
"Maf  eking  Night"  in  London.  Huge  crowds 
paraded  the  streets.  Youths  with  horns 
marched  in  procession  making  music  like  that 
of  Edouard  Strauss,  but  even  louder.  Hawk- 
ers did  an  immense  trade  in  small  gongs  with 
[56] 


PRESSMEN   AND    POLITICIANS 

balls  attached  to  them  which  made  a  noise  like 
cymbals.  Grave-looking  men  wore  on  their 
heads  huge  plumes  of  cut,  wrinkled  paper,  like 
the  paper  with  which  some  people  hide  fire- 
places in  summer  time.  Others  had  notices  on 
their  hats  which  declared  "We  told  you  so," 
notices  printed  beforehand  and  equally  ap- 
plicable to  a  victory  of  the  other  side.  Sky 
signs  and  lights  of  all  sorts  blazed  above  our 
heads.  Newspaper  offices  flashed  election  fig- 
ures on  screens  in  front  of  their  windows.  Now 
and  then  an  explosion  rose  clear  above  the  din, 
and  we  knew  that  some  enterprising  photog- 
rapher was  making  a  flashlight  picture  of  the 
scene. 

There  was  no  question  about  the  fact  that 
New  York  was  pleased  with  itself.  The 
demonstration  of  popular  delight  would  have 
followed  very  appropriately  the  capture  of  a 
Bastille,  some  stronghold  of  an  ancient  tyr- 
anny which  held  people  down  against  their 
will.  The  supporters  of  Tammany  Rule  were, 
of  course,  not  in  Broadway  that  night.  They 
may  have  been  sitting  at  home  behind  drawn 

[57] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

blinds,  meditating  on  the  fickleness  of  men,  or 
perhaps  on  the  ingratitude  of  democracies. 
Tammany  was  corrupt,  no  doubt,  but  the  water 
supply  of  New  York  is  very  good,  and  it  was 
no  easy  matter  to  get  water  there.  Also  the 
city  is  strikingly  clean.  But  there  was  no  ques- 
tion about  the  general  disgust  with  Tammany 
rule.  No  man  whom  I  talked  to  before  or 
after  the  election  had  a  good  word  to  say  for 
the  organization.  Only,  if  I  were  suspected 
of  glorying  in  their  shame,  patriotic  Ameri- 
cans used  occasionally  to  remind  me  of  Mar- 
coni scandals  at  home  and  the  English  sale  of 
patents  of  nobility.  And  this  was  no  real  de- 
fense of  Tammany.  But  I  was  not  glorying, 
and  Heaven  forbid  that  I  should  ever  hold  up 
European  political  methods  as  a  model  to  any 
one.  All  I  wanted  was  to  understand.  I  was 
eagerly  curious  to  know  how  Tammany  came 
to  be,  whence  its  power  came.  It  did  not  sat- 
isfy me  to  be  told  that  Tammany  bribed  people 
and  sold  offices,  and  therefore  was  powerful. 
That  is  like  saying  that  Mohammed  spread  his 
religion  by  force  of  arms.  I  am  sure  that 
[58] 


PRESSMEN   AND    POLITICIANS 

Tammany  did  bribe,  and  I  am  sure  that  Mo- 
hammedans did  ultimately  conquer  and  put 
pressure  on  the  conquered  to  accept  the  Koran. 
But  before  you  can  conquer  you  must  have 
soldiers,  soldiers  who  believe  of  their  own  free 
will.  Before  you  can  bribe  you  must  have 
money  to  bribe  with.  Before  you  can  sell  offi- 
ces you  must  have  offices  to  sell.  How  did 
Tammany  get  itself  into  the  position  of  being 
able  to  bribe? 

I  was  always  asking  these  questions  and  al- 
ways failing  to  get  satisfying  answers  to  them. 
In  the  end,  when  I  had  almost  given  up  hope, 
I  did  get  a  little  light  of  the  sort  I  wanted. 
It  was  after  dinner  one  night  at  a  private  house 
in  New  York.  The  ladies  had  left  the  room, 
and  there  were  five  men  sitting  round  the  table. 
Four  of  them  were  clever  and  distinguished 
men,  and  they  might  have  talked  very  satis- 
factorily about  things  which  interested  them. 
But  with  that  thoughtful  courtesy  which  is  one 
of  the  charms  of  American  hospitality,  they 
allowed  the  fifth  man,  the  stranger  in  their 
midst,  to  guide  the  conversation.    I  asked  one 

[59] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

of  my  usual  questions  about  Tammany.  For 
a  time  I  got  nothing  but  the  familiar  stories  of 
Tammany  corruption  given  with  more  than  the 
usual  detail.  We  had  names  and  dates  put  to 
scandalous  achievements,  and  learned  who  had 
been  allowed  a  "rake  off"  on  this  or  that  finan- 
cial transaction.  I  heard  about  the  alliance, 
under  the  banner  of  Tammany,  between  the 
Irish  and  the  Jews.  I  reflected  that  other 
things  besides  misfortune  makes  strange  bed- 
fellows. Then  came  the  illumination.  One 
of  the  men  present  leaned  back  in  his  chair  and 
laid  down  his  cigar. 

"A  Tammany  ward  boss,"  he  said,  "has  the 
confidence  of  the  people  in  his  ward.  If  he 
had  not  he  would  not  be  a  ward  boss." 

I  did  not  want  to  interrupt  by  asking  ques- 
tions, and  felt  that  I  could  guess  sufficiently 
nearly  the  functions  and  business  of  a  "ward 
boss"  to  do  without  an  explanation. 

"He  wouldn't,"  said  my  friend,  "win  or  keep 

the  confidence  of  the  people  unless  he  deserved 

it  more  or  less,  unless  he  deserved  it  a  good 

deal,  unless  he  really  was  a  friend  to  the  people. 

[60] 


PRESSMEN   AND    POLITICIANS 

He  may  not  be  a  man  of  much  ability.  He 
generally  isn't,  but  he  has  a  good  heart." 

This  was  startling.  My  preconceived  idea 
of  a  Tammany  boss  of  any  kind  was  of  a  man 
of  considerable  ability  and  a  bad  heart.  I  sup- 
pose I  looked  surprised.  The  speaker  quali- 
fied his  statement  a  little. 

"A  good  heart,  to  start  with.  Every  one  in 
the  ward  who  is  in  any  kind  of  difficulty  or 
trouble  goes  to  the  boss.  Most  of  them  are 
poor  ignorant  people  and  don't  know  how  to 
manage  things  for  themselves.  There's  a  sick 
child  who  ought  to  be  got  into  a  hospital.  The 
ward  boss  sees  about  it.  There's  a  boy  who 
ought  to  be  in  a  situation.  The  ward  boss  gets 
a  situation  for  him.     There's  a  man  who  has 

been  badly  treated  by  his  employer Oh! 

you  know  the  sort  of  things  which  turn  up. 
They're  the  same  with  poor  people  all  the  world 
over." 

I  did  know,  very  well.  I  was  also  beginning 
to  understand. 

"Then  I  suppose,"  I  said,  "the  people  vote 
the  way  the  ward  boss  tells  them." 

[61] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

"Naturally." 

Well,  yes,  naturally.  What  do  political 
rights  and  wrongs  matter  to  them? 

"After  a  while,"  my  informant  went  on, 
"if  he  manages  well,  he  is  let  a  little  bit  into 
the  inner  ring.  He  gets  a  bit  of  money 
dropped  to  him  here  and  another  bit  there. 
That  makes  a  difference  to  him.  He  begins  to 
do  himself  pretty  well,  and  he  likes  it." 

Most  men  do.  These  "bits  of  money,"  how- 
ever they  come,  bring  very  pleasant  things 
with  them.    That  is  the  same  everywhere. 

"After  a  while — I  don't  say  this  is  exactly 
what  happens  every  time,  but  it's  something 
like  this.  After  a  while  he  goes  uptown  and 
dines  at  one  of  the  swagger  restaurants,  just 
to  see  what  it's  like.  He  is  a  bit  out  of  it  at 
first,  but  he  goes  again.  He  sees  people  there 
and  he  picks  up  their  names.  They  are  people 
with  very  impressive  names,  names  he's  been 
hearing  all  his  life  and  associating  with  mil- 
lions and  automobiles  and  diamonds.  It  gives 
him  rather  a  pleasant  feeling  to  find  himself 
sitting  at  the  next  table  and  hearing  the  voices 
[62] 


PRESSMEN   AND    POLITICIANS 

of  these  men;  seeing  the  women  with  their 
jewels,  and  smelling  the  scent  off  their  clothes. 
You  know  the  sort  of  thing." 

I  could  guess.  I  have,  in  my  time,  dined  at 
restaurants  of  the  kind,  though  not  often 
enough  to  get  to  know  the  looks  of  their  native 
millionaires. 

"Then  some  night  or  other  one  of  these  men 
steps  across  to  our  man's  table  and  talks  to 
him.  He's  as  friendly  as  the  devil.  He  intro- 
duces him  to  one  or  two  others,  and  perhaps 
to  some  women;  but  women  don't  come  much 
into  business  over  here.  Well,  the  poor  fellow 
is  a  little  bit  above  himself,  and  no  wonder. 
He's  never  been  anything  before  but  just  a 
'Mick,'  and  never  expected  to  be  anything 
else." 

Here  I  had  to  interrupt. 

"A  Mick?"  I  said. 

"An  Irishman.  That's  what  we  generally 
call  Irishmen." 

They  call  us  "Pat"  on  this  side  of  the  Atlan- 
tic, and  I  think  I  prefer  it,  but  I  have  no  par- 

[63] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

ticular  quarrel  with  "Mick."    Both  names  are 
conveniently  short. 

"There's  nothing  more  than  friendliness  at 
first.  Then,  perhaps  a  week  later,  there's  some- 
thing' said  about  a  contract  or  a  new  loan  that 
is  to  be  floated.  Influence,  a  word  in  the  right 
quarter,  comes  in  useful  in  these  cases.  Our 
man,  the  man  we're  talking  of,  doesn't  know 
very  clearly  what  the  talk  is  about.  He  doesn't 
know  that  he  has  any  influence;  but  it  rather 
pleases  him  to  feel  that  the  other  men  think  he 
has.  There  is  a  hint  dropped  about  a  sub- 
scription to  the  party  funds  and — well,  that's 
how  it's  done." 

I  grasped  at  ideas  which  flitted  past  me. 
There  always  are  "party  funds."  Politics 
cannot  go  on  without  them.  There  always  are 
desirable  things,  whether  contracts,  rakes  off, 
appointments,  or — as  in  our  monarch-ridden 
states — titles.  But  I  wonder  where  the  blame 
for  the  corruption  really  lies,  the  heavy  part  of 
the  blame.  Tammany  Mick  had  a  good  heart 
to  start  with  and  he  was  not  a  man  of  much 
ability. 
[64] 


PRESSMEN   AND    POLITICIANS 

However,  these  are  only  the  speculations  of 
an  inquisitive  man.  They  do  not  matter.  New 
York  smashed  Tammany  last  autumn  and  per- 
haps will  keep  it  smashed.  But  a  mere  alliance 
of  anti-Tammany  forces  will  not  permanently 
get  the  better  of  a  well-constructed  machine, 
nor  is  enthusiasm  for  clean  government  good 
in  a  long-distance  race.  An  American  poet 
has  noted  as  one  of  the  characteristics  of  truth 
that,  though  slain,  it  will  rise  again,  and  of 
error  that  when  vanquished  it  dies  among  its 
worshippers.  In  politics  it  is  the  machine  which 
possesses  truth's  valuable  powers  of  recupera- 
tion, and  idealism  which  gets  counted  out  after 
a  knockdown  blow.  It  seems  as  if  a  machine 
will  only  go  under  finally  in  competition  with 
another  more  efficient  machine,  and  the  new, 
more  efficient  machine  is  just  as  great  a  danger 
to  political  morality  as  the  old  one  was.  This 
is  the  vicious  circle  in  which  democracies  go 
round  and  round.  Perhaps  the  truth  is  that 
politics,  like  art,  are  non-moral  in  nature,  that 
politicians  have  nothing  to  do  with  right  or 
wrong,  honesty  or  dishonesty. 

[65] 


CHAPTER   III 


THE  "HUSTLING^  LEGEND 


I  walked  through  New  York  late  at  night, 
shortly  after  I  landed,  and  had  for  compan- 
ions an  Englishman  who  knew  the  city  well 
and  an  American.  The  roar  of  the  traffic  had 
ceased.  The  streets  were  almost  deserted. 
Along  Fifth  Avenue  a  few  motors  rushed 
swiftly,  bearing  belated  revelers  to  their  homes. 
Save  for  them,  the  city  was  as  nearly  silent  as 
any  city  ever  is.  We  talked.  It  was  the  Eng- 
lishman who  spoke  first. 

"New  York  and  the  sound  of  blasting  go 
together,"  he  said.  "They  are  inseparably  con- 
nected in  my  mind.  New  York  is  built  on 
rock  out  of  material  blasted  off  rock  with  dy- 
namite. This  fact  explains  New  York.  It  is 
the  characteristic  thing  about  New  York.  No 
other  city  owes  its  existence  in  the  same  way 
to  the  force  of  explosives  shattering  rock." 
[66] 


THE    "HUSTLING"    LEGEND 

"New  York,"  said  the  American,  "is  one 
of  the  soldiers  of  Attila  the  Hun." 

The  night  was  warm.  He  unbuttoned  his 
overcoat  as  he  spoke  and  flung  it  back  from 
his  chest.  He  squared  his  shoulders,  looked 
up  at  the  immensely  lofty  buildings  on  each 
side  of  us,  looked  round  at  the  shadow-patched 
pavements,  fixed  his  eyes  finally  on  the  lamps 
of  a  motor  which  was  racing  toward  us  from 
a  great  distance  along  the  endless  avenue. 
Then  he  pursued  his  comparison. 

"Attila's  soldier,"  he  said,  "went  through 
some  Roman  city  with  his  club  over  his  shoul- 
der. There  were  round  him  evidences  of  old 
civilizations  which  puzzled  him.  He  gazed  at 
the  temples,  the  baths,  the  theaters  with  won- 
dering curiosity;  but  he  was  conscious  that  he 
could  smash  everything  and  kill  every  one  he 
saw.  He  was  the  barbarian,  but  he  was  also 
the  strong  man.  New  York  is  like  that  among 
the  cities  of  the  world." 

I  contributed  a  borrowed  comment  on 
America. 

"An  Irishman  once  told  me,"  I  said,  "that 

[67] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

America  isn't  a  country.  It's  a  great  space  in 
which  there  are  the  makings  of  a  country  lying 
about.  He  might  have  said  the  same  sort  of 
thing  about  New  York.  There  are  the  mak- 
ings of  a  city  scattered  round." 

"Chunks  of  blasted  rock,"  said  the  Eng- 
lishman. 

"The  Hun  had  a  lot  to  learn,"  said  the 
American,  "but  he  was  the  strong  man.  He 
could  smash  and  crush.    Nobody  else  could." 

There  is  a  very  interesting  story  or  sketch — 
I  do  not  know  how  it  ought  to  be  described — 
by  the  late  "O.  Henry"— which  he  called  "The 
Voice  of  the  City."  He  imagines  that  certain 
American  cities  speak  and  each  of  them  utters 
its  characteristic  word.  Chicago  says,  "I  will." 
Philadelphia  says,  "I  ought."  New  Orleans 
says,  "I  used  to."  If  I  had  "O.  Henry's" 
genius  I  should  try  to  concentrate  into  phrases 
the  voices  of  the  cities  I  know.  I  should  like 
to  be  able  to  hear  distinctly  what  they  all  say 
about  themselves.  Belfast,  I  am  convinced, 
says,  "I  won't."  Dublin  occasionally  mur- 
murs, "It  doesn't  really  matter."  So  far  I 
[68] 


THE    "HUSTLING"   LEGEND 

seem  to  get,  but  there  I  am  puzzled.  I  should 
like  to  hear  what  Edinburgh  says,  what  Paris 
says,  what  Rome  would  say  if  something 
waked  her  out  of  her  dream.  I  should  be 
beaten  by  London,  even  if  I  had  all  his  genius, 
just  as  "O.  Henry"  was  beaten  by  New  York. 
He  failed  to  disentangle  the  motif  from  the 
clamorous  tumult  of  mighty  chorus  with  which 
that  city  assails  the  ear.  There  is  a  supreme 
moment  which  comes  in  the  Waldstein  Son- 
ata. The  listener  is  a-quiver  with  maddening 
expectation.  He  is  wrought  upon  with  sound 
until  he  feels  that  he  must  tear  some  soft  thing 
with  his  teeth.  Then,  at  the  moment  when  the 
passion  in  him  becomes  intolerable,  the  great 
scrap  of  melody  thunders  triumphantly  over 
the  confusion  and  it  is  possible  to  breathe 
again.  This  is  just  what  does  not  happen  in  the 
case  of  places  like  London  and  New  York.  A 
Beethoven  yet  unborn  will  catch  their  melodies 
for  us  some  day  and  the  sonata  of  great  cities 
will  be  written.  Till  he  comes  it  is  better  to 
leave  the  thing  alone.  Neither  blasting  nor 
dynamite  is  the  keyword.    Attila's  Hun  with 

[69] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

his  club  fails  us,  though  he  helps  a  little.  And 
there  is  more,  a  great  deal  more,  about  New 
York  than  the  confused  massing  of  materials 
on  the  site  of  what  is  to  be  a  temple  or  a  rail- 
way station. 

When  I  was  in  New  York  they  were  build- 
ing a  large  edifice  of  some  kind  in  Broadway, 
not  far  from  Thirty-fifth  Street.  I  used  to 
see  the  work  in  progress  every  day,  and  often 
stopped  to  watch  the  builders  for  a  while. 
Whenever  I  think  of  New  York  I  shall  re- 
member the  shrill  scream  of  the  air  drill 
which  made  holes  in  the  steel  girders.  The 
essential  thing  about  that  noise  was  its  sugges- 
tion of  relentlessness.  Perhaps  New  York  is 
of  all  cities  the  most  relentless.  The  steel  suf- 
fers and  shrieks  through  a  long  chromatic 
scale  of  agony.  New  York  drills  a  hole,  pauses 
to  readjust  its  terrible  force,  and  then  drills 
again. 

That  is  one  aspect  of  New  York.  The 
stranger  cannot  fail  to  be  conscious  of  it.  It 
is  brought  home  to  him  by  the  rush  of  the  over- 
head railway  in  Sixth  Avenue,  by  the  hurry 
[70] 


THE    "HUSTLING"   LEGEND 

of  the  crowds  in  Broadway,  by  the  grinding 
clamor  of  the  subway  trains.  It  is  this,  no 
doubt,  which  has  given  rise  to  the  theory  that 
New  York  is  a  city  of  hustle.  It  seems  to  me 
a  very  cruel  thing  to  say  of  any  people  that 
they  hustle.  The  word  suggests  a  disagree- 
able kind  of  spurious  activity.  The  hustler  is 
not  likely  to  be  efficient.  He  makes  a  fine  show 
of  doing  things ;  but  he  does  not,  somehow,  get 
much  done.  The  hustler  is  like  a  football 
player  who  is  in  all  parts  of  the  field  at  differ- 
ent times,  sometimes  in  the  forward  line,  some- 
times among  the  backs,  always  breathless,  gen- 
erally very  much  in  the  way,  and  contributing 
less  than  any  one  else  to  the  winning  of  the 
game  for  his  side.  If  New  York  were  a  city 
of  hustlers,  New  York  would  drill  no  holes  in 
steel  girders. 

The  fact  is  that  America  has,  in  this  matter 
of  hustle,  been  grossly  slandered  in  Europe. 
I  am  not  sure  that  the  Americans,  with  a  curi- 
ous perversity,  have  not  slandered  themselves, 
and  done  as  much  as  any  one  to  keep  the  hustle 
myth  alive.     The  American  understands  the 

[71] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

value  of  not  hurrying  as  well  as  any  one  in  the 
world.  He  has,  justly,  a  high  opinion  of  him- 
self and  declines  to  be  a  slave  to  a  wretched 
machine  like  a  clock.  I  realized  this  leisure- 
liness  the  first  time  I  went  into  a  restaurant  to 
get  something  to  eat.  I  could  have  smoked  a 
cigarette  comfortably  between  the  ordering 
and  the  getting  of  what  I  ordered.  I  could 
have  smoked  other  cigarettes,  calmly,  as  cigar- 
ettes ought  to  be  smoked,  between  each  course. 
American  men  do  actually  smoke  in  this  way 
during  meals,  and  I  trace  the  custom  not  to  an 
excessive  fondness  for  tobacco  but  to  the  lei- 
surely way  in  which  the  business  of  eating 
is  gone  about.  And  it  is  not  in  restaurants 
only  that  this  quiet  disregard  of  time's  abom- 
inable habit  of  going  on  is  evident.  The  New 
York  business  man  gets  through  his  work — 
it  is  evident  that  he  does  get  through  it — with- 
out feeling  it  necessary  to  give  every  one  the 
impression  that  each  half  hour  of  the  day  is 
dedicated  to  a  separate  affair  and  that  the 
entire  time-table  will  be  reduced  to  chaos  if 
[72] 


THE    "HUSTLING"    LEGEND 

a  single  minute  strays  out  of  its  proper  com- 
partment into  the  next. 

Perhaps  it  is  because  I  am  Irish  that  I  like 
this  way  of  doing  business.  There  is  a  char- 
acter in  one  of  the  late  Canon  Sheehan's  novels 
who  says  that  there  are  two  things  which  are 
plenty  in  Ireland — water  and  time.  There  are 
undoubtedly  places  in  the  world  where  water 
is  scarce,  the  Sahara  desert  for  instance;  but  I 
suspect  that  time  is  quite  abundant  everywhere 
though  some  people  affect  to  believe  that  it  is 
not.  I  know  English  business  men  who  scowl 
at  you  if  you  venture,  having  settled  the  little 
affair  which  brought  you  to  their  office,  to 
make  a  pleasant  remark  about  the  chances  of 
a  general  election  before  Christmas.  They 
pretend  that  they  have  not  time  to  talk  about 
General  Elections.  They  do  this,  as  Bob  Saw- 
yer used  to  have  himself  summoned  from 
church,  in  order  to  keep  up  their  reputation. 
They  want  you  to  think  that  they  are  over- 
whelmed with  pressing  things.  I  have  always 
suspected  that,  having  got  rid  of  their  visitor, 
they  spend  hours  reading  about  General  Elec- 

[73] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

tions  in  the  daily  papers.  The  American  busi- 
ness man  is,  apparently,  never  too  busy  to  en- 
joy a  chat.  He  invites  you  to  lunch  with  him 
when  you  go  to  his  office.  He  shows  you  the 
points  of  interest  in  the  neighborhood  after 
luncheon.  He  discusses  the  present  condition 
of  Ireland,  a  subject  which  demands  an  im- 
mense quantity  of  time.  He  settles  the  little 
matter  which  brought  you  to  his  office  with 
three  sentences  and  a  wave  of  the  hand.  He 
does  not  write  you  a  letter  afterwards  begin- 
ning :  "In  confirmation  of  our  conversation  to- 
day I  note  that  you  are  prepared  to "    It 

is,  I  suppose,  a  man's  temperament  which 
settles  which  way  of  doing  business  he  prefers. 
It  is  also  very  largely  a  question  of  temper. 
In  my  normal  mood  I  prefer  the  American 
method.  There  is  a  broad  humanity  about  it 
which  appeals  to  me  strongly.  But  if  I  have 
been  annoyed  by  anything  early  in  the  day, 
broken  a  bootlace,  for  instance,  or  lost  a  collar 
stud,  I  would  rather  do  business  in  the  Eng- 
lish way.  In  the  one  case  I  like  to  come  in 
contact  with  a  fellow  man,  to  feel  that  he  has 
[74] 


THE    "HUSTLING"    LEGEND 

affections  and  weaknesses  like  my  own.  It  is 
pleasant  to  get  to  know  him  personally.  In 
the  other  case,  thanks  to  the  misfortunes  of 
the  morning,  I  am  filled  with  a  gloomy  hatred 
of  my  kind.  I  want,  until  the  mood  has  worn 
off,  to  see  as  little  as  possible  of  any  one  and 
to  keep  inevitable  people  at  arm's  length.  It 
is  much  easier  to  do  this  when  the  inevitable 
people  also  want  to  keep  me  at  arm's  length, 
and  the  English  business  man  generally  does. 
The  friendliness  of  the  American  business  man 
is  a  little  trying  sometimes  to  any  one  in  a 
bad  temper.  Sometimes,  not  always.  I  re- 
member one  occasion  on  which  I  was  excep- 
tionally cross.  I  forget  what  had  happened 
to  me  in  the  morning,  but  it  was  worse  than 
breaking  a  bootlace.  It  may  have  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  telephones,  instruments  which 
generally  drive  me  to  fury.  At  all  events, 
though  in  a  bad  temper,  I  had  to  go  to  see  a 
man  in  his  office.  He  was  a  man  of  extraor- 
dinarily friendly  spirit,  even  for  an  American. 
I  dreaded  my  interview,  fearing  that  I  might 
say  something  actually  rude  before  it  was  over. 

[75] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

Nothing  could  have  been  more  soothing  than 
my  reception.  This  wonderful  man  cast  a 
single  quick  glance  at  me  as  I  entered  his  of- 
fice. He  realized  my  condition  and  got 
through  with  the  wretched  necessity  which  had 
brought  me  there  with  a  rapidity  and  precision 
which  would  have  done  credit  to  any  English- 
man. Then  he  ushered  me  out  again  without 
making  or  giving  me  time  to  make  a  single 
remark  of  a  miscellaneous  kind.  I  apologized 
to  him  afterwards.  He  patted  me  reassuringly 
on  the  shoulder. 

"That's  all  right,"  he  said.  "I  saw  the 
minute  you  came  into  the  room  that  you  were 
a  bit  rattled." 

That  seems  to  me  a  splendid  example  of 
tact.  I  do  not  suggest  that  all  American  busi- 
ness men  have  this  faculty  for  swift,  self-sac- 
rificing sympathy.  It  must  be  rare,  even  in 
New  York.  Does  it  exist  at  all  in  England? 
If  I  called  on  an  English  merchant  some 
morning  when  the  spring  was  in  my  blood  and 
I  felt  that  I  wanted  to  leap  and  spring  like  a 
lamb,  would  he  divine  my  mood,  join  hands 
[76] 


THE    "HUSTLING"   LEGEND 

and  dance  with  me  on  his  hearth  rug?  I  doubt 
it.  He  would  not  do  it  even  if  I  were  a  hun- 
dred times  more  important  than  I  am.  He 
would  not  do  it  if  I  were  chairman  of  a  fan- 
tastically prosperous  company.  Yet  it  must 
have  been  just  as  hard  for  my  American  friend 
to  be  austere  as  it  would  be  for  an  Englishman 
to  be  inanely  gay. 

I  am  not  a  business  man  myself.  I  have 
for  many  years  practiced  the  art  of  getting 
other  people  to  manage  my  small  affairs  for 
me,  so  perhaps  I  ought  not  to  write  about  busi- 
ness men.  But  an  author  is  always  on  the 
horns  of  a  dilemma.  He  knows  he  ought  not 
to  write  about  anything  that  he  does  not  thor- 
oughly understand.  But  if  he  confined  him- 
self to  those  subjects,  he  would  never  write 
anything  at  all.  Even  if  he  gave  himself  some 
latitude  and  allowed  himself  to  write  about 
things  of  which  he  knows  a  little,  he  would 
still  find  himself  in  a  narrow  place.  His  best 
hope  is  that  if  he  writes  freely  on  every  sub- 
ject that  comes  into  his  head  he  will  only  be 
found  out  by  a  few  people  at  a  time.    Sailors 

[77] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

will  find  him  out  when  he  writes  about  the  sea. 
Insurance  agents  will  laugh  at  his  ignorance 
when  he  writes  about  premiums;  doctors  will 
be  irritated  when  he  sets  down  what  he  thinks 
about  measles.  But  the  sailors  will  believe  that 
he  knows  a  great  deal  about  insurance  and  dis- 
ease in  general;  doctors  will  think  him  an  ex- 
pert about  ships,  and  so  forth.  And  there  are 
always  far  fewer  people  in  any  given  profes- 
sion than  there  are  people  out  of  it.  The 
writer  has  therefore  a  good  hope  that  those 
who  find  him  out  in  any  point  in  which  he 
touches  will  always  be  a  minority.  Minorities 
do  not  matter. 

It  is  the  consideration  of  this  fact  which 
gives  me  courage  to  write  about  business  men, 
and  more  courage  now  to  go  on  and  write  about 
buildings.  I  know  nothing  about  architec- 
ture, but  the  people  who  do  are  very  few,  so 
that  the  penalty  of  being  found  out  will  be 
light. 

There  does  not  seem  at  first  glance  to  be  any 
connection  between  business  men  and  archi- 
tecture. But  there  is  a  very  real  one.  There 
[78] 


THE    "HUSTLING"   LEGEND 

is  also  a  private  connection  of  thought  in  my 
own  mind.  It  was  from  the  windows  of  an 
office,  high  up  in  one  of  the  skyscraper  build- 
ings, that  I  got  my  first  comprehensive  view  of 
New  York.  There  is,  generally,  a  certain 
sameness  about  these  bird's-eye  views  of  cities. 
The  bird,  and  the  man  who  gets  into  the  posi- 
tion of  the  bird,  sees  a  number  of  spires  of 
churches  sticking  up  into  the  sky  and  below 
them  a  huddled  mass  of  roofs.  Sometimes  tall 
chimneys  assert  themselves  beside  the  spires. 
But  the  spires  are  the  dominating  things.  The 
chimneys  may  have  every  appearance  of  arro- 
gance, but  one  feels  that  they  are  upstarts. 
The  spires  hold  the  place  of  a  recognized  aris- 
tocracy. The  bird,  if  he  were  say  an  eagle, 
and  had  not  the  sparrow's  intimate  knowledge 
of  the  life  of  the  streets,  would  naturally  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  worship  of  God  is 
the  most  potent  factor  in  the  life  of  the  Euro- 
pean city.  He  would,  perhaps,  be  wrong,  but 
he  would  have  a  good  case  to  make  for  him- 
self when  he  was  recounting  his  experiences 
to  the  other  eagles. 

[79] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

"I  have  seen,"  he  would  say,  "these  vast  nest- 
ing places  of  men,  and  the  spires  of  the 
churches  are  far  the  most  important  things  in 
them.  They  reach  up  higher  than  anything 
else,  and  there  are  great  numbers  of  them." 

But  the  eagle  would  not  say  that  about  New 
York.  It  is  not  spires,  nor  is  it  factory  chim- 
neys which  stick  up  highest  there  and  catch 
the  attention  of  a  spectator  from  a  height. 
Office  buildings  are  the  dominant  things. 
Churches  are  kept  in  what  many  people  re- 
gard as  their  proper  place.  You  can  see  them 
if  you  look  for  them,  but  they  are  subordi- 
nate. The  same  thing  is  true  of  another  view 
of  New  York,  that  marvelous  spectacle  of  the 
city's  profile  which  you  get  in  the  evening  from 
any  of  the  Hudson  River  ferry  boats.  The 
sky  line  is  jagged  and  the  silhouettes  are  not 
those  of  cross-crowned  domes  or  spires,  but  of 
large  buildings  dedicated  to  commerce. 

The  philosophic  eagle  might,  reasoning  as 

he  did  before,  leap  to  the  conclusion  that  God 

is  of  little  importance  in  the  city  of  New  York ; 

that  bank  books  there  count  for  more  than 

[80] 


THE    "HUSTLING"   LEGEND 

Bibles.  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  he  would  be 
right.  It  looks,  any  one  who  has  seen  New 
York  must  admit  it,  as  if  the  American  who 
coined  the  phrase,  "the  almighty  dollar,"  had 
really  expressed  the  faith  of  his  countrymen. 
But  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  he  was  led  into 
injustice  by  a  desire  to  be  epigrammatic.  It 
may  be  that  my  experience  was  singularly  for- 
tunate, but  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  God 
counts  for  a  good  deal  in  the  life  of  New  York 
and  of  America  generally.  I  do  not  mean  that 
any  creed  has  obtained  for  itself  national 
recognition,  or  that  any  particular  church  has 
reached  a  position  analogous  to  that  of  the 
English  established  church.  Religion  in 
America  seems  to  me  a  confused  force,  which 
has  not  yet  fully  found  itself;  but  it  is  a  force. 
The  desire  to  do  justly,  to  love  mercy,  though 
scarcely  perhaps  to  walk  humbly,  is  present 
and  is  coming  to  be  mightier  than  the  dollar. 
Yet  it  is  certainly  true  that  the  most  strik- 
ing buildings  in  New  York  are  not  ecclesias- 
tical, but  commercial.  This  is  a  defiance  of 
the  old  European  tradition,  a  breach  even  of 

[81] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

that  feebler  tradition  which  America  took  over 
from  Europe  before  she  entered  into  posses- 
sion of  her  own  soul.  I  am  reminded  of  At- 
tila's  Hun  with  his  contempt  for  Roman  civili- 
zation and  his  confidence  in  his  own  strength. 
Business  used  to  look  askance  at  magnifi- 
cence. It  was  the  pride  of  the  London  mer- 
chant that  he  managed  mighty  affairs  in  an 
unpretentious  counting  house.  But  we  are 
learning  from  the  Americans.  Our  insurance 
companies  were  the  first  to  start  building 
sumptuous  habitations  for  themselves.  Banks 
and  other  corporations  are  following  their  ex- 
ample. Yet  even  to-day  the  offices  in  the  city 
of  London  are  singularly  unimpressive  to  the 
eye,  and  many  a  house  with  world-wide  influ- 
ence scorns  to  appeal  to  the  passerby  with 
anything  more  striking  than  a  "Push"  or 
"Pull"  stamped  in  worn  letters  on  the  brass 
plates  of  a  pair  of  swinging  doors.  It  was  a 
great  tradition,  this  total  lack  of  ostentation 
where  mighty  forces  were.  At  first  New  York 
too  felt  the  attraction  of  it.  Wall  Street, 
which  is  one  of  the  older  parts  of  the  city,  is 
[82] 


THE    "HUSTLING"    LEGEND 

not  impressive  to  look  at.  The  Cotton  Ex- 
change is  a  building  of  a  very  middling  kind. 
Yet  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  instinct  for 
magnificence  displayed  by  the  newer  Ameri- 
can captains  of  commerce  is  sound.  I  am  not 
considering  the  advertisement  value  of  a  great 
building.  It  may  be  worth  something  in  that 
way,  though  grubbiness  can  also  be  an  effec- 
tive advertisement.  What  seems  to  lie  at  the 
back  of  the  display  is  the  desire  of  life  to  ex- 
press itself  in  sumptuousness.  The  Venetians, 
a  nation  of  merchants,  felt  this  and  built  in 
the  spirit  of  it.  After  all,  commerce  is  a  very 
great  kind  of  life.  There  is  energy  in  it,  ad- 
venture, romance.  It  offers  opportunities  for 
struggle,  promises  victory,  threatens  defeat. 
Is  it  any  wonder  that  men  absorbed  in  it  should 
feel  the  thrill  of  the  "superbia  vitce"  and  build 
to  secure  visible  embodiment  for  the  emotion? 
Men  have  always  tried  to  build  finely  for  their 
governors.  Kings'  palaces  and  parliament 
houses  are  impressive  everywhere.  This  was 
right  when  kings  and  parliaments  were  im- 
portant.    Now  that  the  offices  of  financiers 

[83] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

are  much  more  important  than  the  habitations 
of  law  makers,  they  too  are  becoming  splendid. 
It  is,  I  suppose,  to  be  expected  that  these 
mighty  buildings  should  have  forms  which  at 
first  are  repellent  in  their  strangeness.  We, 
who  were  nursed  in  an  older  artistic  tradition, 
have  learned  to  value,  perhaps  too  highly,  re- 
straint and  dignity.  The  outstanding  char- 
acteristics of  the  American  skyscraper  seem 
to  me  to  be  exuberance.  I  am  reminded  of  the 
wild  spirit  of  one  or  two  European  buildings, 
of  the  cloisters  of  Belem,  for  instance,  though 
there  the  sense  of  exultation  expresses  itself 
in  a  very  different  way.  But  the  essential 
spirit  is  similar.  I  could  imagine  the  builders 
chanting  as  they  worked:  "Behold  ye  are  gods. 
Ye  are  all  children  of  the  Highest."  They 
are  gods  who  have  not  experienced  the  tedium 
vitce  of  Olympian  happiness.  But  New  York 
is  not  so  drunken  with  exuberance  that  it  can 
not  build  with  quiet  dignity.  Tiffany's  shop 
in  Fifth  Avenue,  and,  a  little  lower  down,  Alt- 
man's  great  department  store,  are  buildings 
on  which  the  eye  rests  with  undisturbed  satis- 
[84] 


THE    "HUSTLING"    LEGEND 

faction.  The  men  who  built  these  had  more  in 
mind  than  the  erection  of  houses  in  which  rings 
or  stockings  might  conveniently  be  sold.  They 
felt  that  commerce  in  jewelry  or  clothes  was 
in  itself  a  worthy  thing  which  might  be  under- 
taken in  a  lofty  spirit,  and  greatly  carried  on. 
There  is  a  feeling  of  nobility  in  the  propor- 
tion of  windows  and  doors,  in  the  severity  of 
the  street  fronts.  These  might  be  palaces  of 
noblemen  of  an  ancient  lineage.  They  are — 
shops.  Has  America  discovered  a  dignity  in 
shop-keeping?  The  station  of  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Railway  is  one  of  the  glories  of  New 
York,  and  here  again  New  York  is  certainly 
right,  though  I — it  is  a  purely  personal  feel- 
ing— am  infuriated  to  find  the  calm  self-re- 
straint of  the  Greeks  associated  with  anything 
so  blatant  as  a  railway  train.  Anywhere  else 
in  the  world  the  great  hall  of  the  Central 
Station  would  be  the  nave  of  a  Cathedral.  It 
is  impossible  not  to  feel — even  when  hurrying 
for  a  train — that  the  porters  are  really  acolytes 
masquerading  for  a  moment  in  honor  of  some 
fantastic  fool's  day. 

[85] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

The  churches  of  New  York  are  of  subor- 
dinate interest.  Trinity  Church  has  a  singu- 
larly suggestive  position,  right  opposite  the 
end  of  Wall  Street,  God  in  protest  against 
Mammon.  But  the  building  itself  might  be 
anywhere  in  England.  I  can  fancy  it  in  Not- 
tingham or  Bath,  and  there  would  be  no  need 
to  alter  the  place  of  a  stone  in  it.  It  is  a  dig- 
nified and  beautiful  parish  church,  but  it  has, 
as  a  building,  nothing  American  about  it.  It 
has  not,  apparently,  influenced  the  spirit  of 
New  York  architecture.  The  people  have  not 
found  self-expression  in  it.  St.  Patrick's 
Cathedral,  in  Fifth  Avenue,  is  a  fine,  a  very 
fine  example  of  modern  Gothic.  Except  the 
new  Graduate  College  buildings  at  Princeton, 
this  cathedral  strikes  me  as  the  finest  example 
of  modern  Gothic  I  have  ever  seen.  But  ought 
New  York  to  have  Gothic  buildings?  Here, 
I  know,  I  come  up  against  the  difficult  ques- 
tion. There  are  those  who  hold  that  for  certain 
purposes — for  worship  and  for  the  dignified 
ceremonial  life  of  a  university — the  Gothic 
building  is  the  one  perfect  form  which  man 
[86] 


THE    "HUSTLING"    LEGEND 

has  devised.  We  cannot  better  it.  All  we  can 
do  is  soak  ourselves  in  the  spirit  of  the  men  of 
the  great  centuries  of  this  style  and  humbly 
try  to  feel  as  they  felt  so  that  we  may  build 
as  they.  It  may  be  granted  that  we  shall  de- 
vise nothing  better.  I,  for  one,  gladly  admit 
that  St.  Patrick's  in  New  York  and  the  Hall 
at  Princeton  are  conceived  in  the  old  spirit  and 
are  as  perfect  as  any  modern  work  of  the  kind 
is,  perhaps  as  perfect  as  any  modern  Gothic 
work  can  be.  But  when  all  this  is  said  it  re- 
mains true  that  the  life  of  New  York  is  not 
the  life  of  mediaeval  Rouen,  of  the  London 
which  built  Westminster  or  of  the  Cologne 
which  paid  honor  to  the  Three  Kings.  Can 
New  York  accept  as  its  vision  of  the  divine 
the  conception,  however  splendid,  of  those 
"dear  dead  days"? 

It  may  well  be  that  I  am  all  wrong  in  my 
feeling  about  modern  Gothic,  that  what  is 
wanting  in  these  buildings  is  not  the  spirit 
which  was  in  the  old  ones.  It  may  be  that,  like 
certain  finer  kinds  of  wine,  they  require  ma- 
turing.    I  can  conceive  that  a  church  which 

[87] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

seems  remote  now,  almost  to  the  point  of  frig- 
idity, may  not  only  seem,  but  actually  be,  dif- 
ferent two  hundred  years  hence.  It  is  scarcely 
possible  to  think  that  the  prayers  of  genera- 
tions have  no  effect  upon  the  walls  of  the 
building  in  which  they  are  uttered.  There 
must  cling  to  the  place  some  aroma,  some 
subtle  essence  of  the  reachings  after  God  of 
generation  after  generation.  The  repentances 
of  broken  hearts,  the  supplications  of  sorrow- 
ing women,  the  vows  of  strong,  hopeful  souls, 
the  pieties  of  meek  priests,  must  be  present 
still  among  the  arches  and  the  dim  places  above 
them.  Men  consecrate  their  temples,  but  it 
takes  them  centuries  to  do  it.  Perhaps  West- 
minster would  have  left  me  cold  if  I  had 
walked  its  aisles  four  hundred  years  ago.  This 
lack  of  maturity  and  not,  as  I  suppose,  the 
fact  that  they  do  not  come  of  the  spirit  of  our 
time,  may  be  what  is  the  matter  with  our  newer 
Gothic  buildings. 

There  is  one  church  in  New  York — there 
may  be  others  unknown  to  me — which  gives  the 
impression  of  having  grown  out  of  the  life 
[88] 


THE    "HUSTLING"    LEGEND 

which  dwelt  in  it,  in  the  same  sense  in  which 
certain  English  churches,  those  especially  of 
the  Sussex  country  side,  have  grown  rather 
than  been  deliberately  and  consciously  built. 
This  is  the  unpretentious  building  known  as 
"The  Little  Church  Round  the  Corner."  The 
affectionate  familiarity  of  the  name  suits  the 
place  and  means  more  to  the  discerning  soul 
than  any  dedication  could  mean.  The  student 
of  architecture  would  perhaps  reckon  this 
church  contemptible,  and  having  seen  it  once 
would  bestow  no  second  glance  upon  it.  It  is 
built  in  no  style  of  recognized  orthodoxy.  I 
do  not  know  its  history,  but  it  looks  as  if  bits 
had  been  added  on  to  it  time  after  time  by 
people  who  knew  nothing  and  cared  nothing 
for  unity  of  design,  but  who  had  in  their  hearts 
a  genuine  love  for  the  building.  It  is  an  ex- 
pression of  life,  this  little  church,  but  not,  I 
think,  of  the  life  of  New  York.  It  is  as  if 
someone  had  made  a  little  garden  and  filled  it 
with  all  kinds  of  delicate  sweet-smelling  flow- 
ers in  a  glade  of  a  mighty  forest.  Within  the 
garden  are  the  flowers,  tended  and  well-be- 

[89] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

loved.  Outside  and  all  around  are  great  trees 
with  gnarled  trunks  and  far-off  branches 
which  have  fought  their  own  way  in  desper- 
ate competition  to  the  sunlight.  I  could,  I 
think,  worship  very  faithfully  in  that  "Little 
Church  Round  the  Corner,"  but  I  should  have 
to  shut  New  York  out  of  my  heart  every  time 
I  passed  through  the  doors  of  it.  Just  so  I 
can  find  delight  in  the  sweetness  of  Keble's 
"Christian  Year,"  but  while  I  do  I  must  for- 
get the  sea,  and  how  "at  his  word  the  stormy 
wind  ariseth  which  lifteth  up  the  waves  there- 
of." I  must  cease  to  be  in  love  with  the  perils 
of  adventuring. 

There  is  one  church  in  New  York  which 
seems  to  me  to  have  caught  the  spirit  of  the 
city,  the  unfinished  cathedral  of  St.  John  the 
Divine.  It  gives  the  worshipper  within  its  walls 
a  strange  sense  of  titanic  strength  striving 
majestically  to  express  itself  in  stone.  I  am 
told  that  the  building  is  to  be  finished  in  some 
other  way,  in  accordance  with  the  rules  and 
orthodoxies  of  some  school  of  architecture. 
This  may  not  be  true,  but,  even  if  it  is,  there 
[90] 


THE    "HUSTLING"    LEGEND 

still  remains  the  hope  that  enough  has  been  al- 
ready done  to  preserve  for  the  finished  work  its 
character  of  relentless  strength.  If  its  build- 
ers are  brave  enough  to  go  as  they  have  begun, 
this  cathedral  should  rank  in  the  eyes  of  fu- 
ture generations  as  one  of  the  great  houses  of 
God  in  the  world.  St.  Mark's,  with  its  fan- 
tastic spires  and  gorgeous  coloring,  expresses 
all  the  past  history  of  Venice  and  her  com- 
merce with  the  East,  all  which  that  strange 
republic  learnt  of  the  Divine,  from  the  glow 
of  Syrian  deserts,  where  sun-baked  caravans 
crawled  slowly,  and  from  the  heavy  scents  of 
Midianitish  merchandise  in  the  market  places 
of  Damascus.  The  confused  and  misty  aisles 
of  Westminster  embody  in  stone  a  realized 
conception  of  the  tumultuous  life  of  London, 
of  its  black  river  weary  with  the  weight  of  the 
untold  wealth  it  bears,  of  its  crowds  thronging 
narrow  places,  of  its  streets  where  past  and 
present  look  suspiciously  into  each  other's  eyes, 
while  things  which  are  to  be  already  push  for 
elbow  room.  The  Cathedral  of  St.  John  the 
Divine,  standing  on  the  very  edge  of  its  steep, 

[91] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

broken  hill,  gives  me  as  no  other  building  does 
the  sense  of  strength  of  the  kind  of  strength 
which  will  do  rather  than  endure,  which  is  un- 
willing to  abide  restraint  of  any  kind. 

The  building  is  a  fit  mate  for  the  skyscrap- 
ers, can  hold  its  own  among  them  because  its 
spirit  is  their  spirit,  touched  with  the  flame  of 
inspiration  by  the  torch  of  the  divine.  The 
very  absence  of  unity  of  style  seems  the  crown- 
ing glory  of  it.  It  is  Attila's  Hun  once  more. 
What  did  he  care  that  the  spoils  in  which  he 
decked  himself  were  of  various  fashionings? 
It  is  the  dynamite  blasting  living  rock.  It  is, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  New  York  in  process  of 
being  given  in  stone  an  interpretation  which 
neither  words  nor  music  have  given  her  yet.  It 
will  be  a  loss,  not  only  to  New  York  but  to  the 
world,  if  the  builders  of  the  Cathedral  of  St. 
John  the  Divine  allow  themselves  to  be  fright- 
ened by  the  spectre  of  European  artistic  tra- 
dition. They  may  tame  their  church,  civilize 
it,  curl  and  comb  the  seven  locks  of  its  hair. 
If  they  do,  the  strength  will  surely  depart  from 
it  and  it  will  become  a  common  thing. 
[92] 


CHAPTER   IV 

HOLIDAY   FEVER 

We  shall  always  be  thankful  that  we  paid  a 
visit  to  Atlantic  City.  It  is  not,  I  believe,  one 
of  the  places  of  which  Americans  are  particu- 
larly proud.  The  trains  which  connect  it  with 
New  York  have  indeed  ,the  reputation  of  being 
the  fastest  in  the  world,  but  that  may  not  be 
because  every  one  is  in  a  great  hurry  to  get  to 
Atlantic  City.  They  run  at  high  speed  both 
ways,  and  it  is  quite  possible  that  some  men 
may  be  in  an  equal  hurry  to  get  away.  Our 
friends  were  certainly  a  little  cold  when  we 
said  we  were  going  there.  Left  to  ourselves, 
or  meekly  following,  as  we  generally  do,  the 
advice  given  to  us  by  well-instructed  people, 
we  should  not  have  gone  to  Atlantic  City.  But 
we  were  shepherded  there  by  circumstance, 
fate,  or  whatever  the  power  is  called  which 
regulates  the  minor  affairs  of  life.    And  we 

[93] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

were  glad  we  went.  No  one,  says  Tennyson, 
can  be  more  wise  than  destiny.  Our  visit  to 
Atlantic  City  went  to  prove  the  truth  of  that 
profound  remark. 

The  mean  which  destiny  used  for  getting  us 
to  Atlantic  City  was  a  play.  We  had  a  play 
of  our  own,  and  it  was  produced  there  for  the 
first  time  on  the  west  side  of  the  Atlantic. 
American  theatrical  managers  believe  in  ex- 
perimenting with  a  play  in  some  minor  place 
before  taking  the  plunge  of  the  New  York 
production.  They  call  this — in  a  phrase  not 
unknown  in  England — "trying  it  on  the  dog." 
It  seems  to  me  rather  a  good  plan.  The  ver- 
dict of  the  dog  is  not  indeed  of  great  value. 
Dogs,  human  dogs,  are  the  same  everywhere. 
They  are  afraid  to  say  they  like  anything  which 
has  not  got  the  seal  of  a  great  city's  approval 
set  on  it.  They  take  refuge  in  damning  with 
dubious  phrase;  and,  in  fact,  ho  one  with  any 
experience  much  minds  what  they  say.  But 
the  experimental  production  has  a  value  of  its 
own  apart  from  the  opinion  of  the  dog.  The 
company  shakes  down  and  learns  to  work  to- 
[94] 


HOLIDAY    FEVER 

gether.  The  first  performance  in  an  impor- 
tant place,  when  the  time  comes  for  it,  is  much 
more  likely  to  go  smoothly  if  the  actors  have 
faced  audiences,  even  audiences  of  the  dog 
kind,  every  night  for  a  week  beforehand. 

We  did  not  understand  the  philosophy  of 
these  dog  productions  at  first,  and  were  there- 
fore a  little  nervous  all  the  time  we  were  in 
Atlantic  City,  but  not,  I  am  glad  to  say,  ner- 
vous enough  to  have  our  enjoyment  of  the 
place  spoiled.  Nothing  would  induce  me  to 
say,  or  for  a  single  moment  to  think,  that  At- 
lantic City  is  in  any  way  a  characteristic  prod- 
uct of  American  civilization.  All  our  civiliza- 
tions produce  places  of  this  kind.  But  it  is 
fair,  I  think,  to  say  that  America  does  this 
particular  thing  better  than  any  other  country. 
Superior  people  might  say  that  America  does 
it  worse;  but  I  am  not  superior.  I  recognize 
that  the  toiling  masses  have  a  right  to  revel 
during  their  brief  holidays  in  the  way  that 
appeals  to  them  as  most  delightful.  I  do  not 
revel  in  that  way  myself;  but  that  is  not  be- 
cause I  have  found  better  ways,  but  only  be- 

[95] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

cause  I  am  growing  older  and  prefer  to  take 
my  humble  pleasures  quietly.  When  I  was 
young  I  enjoyed  tumultuous  pleasures  as  much 
as  any  one.  I  revelled  with  the  best  of  my 
day  in  the  town  of  Douglas ;  and,  if  I  did  not 
get  as  much  out  of  it  as  I  might  now  if  I  were 
young  again,  it  was  only  because  there  was 
not,  in  those  days,  nearly  so  much  in  it.  The 
holiday  resort  has  been  enormously  developed 
during  the  last  twenty-five  years,  and  Amer- 
ica, judging  by  Atlantic  City — and  I  am  told 
Coney  Island  is  better — is  in  the  very  van  of 
human  progress. 

I  have  seen  Portrush,  our  humble  Irish  at- 
tempt at  a  pleasure  city.  I  have  seen  Black- 
pool, which  far  surpasses  Portrush  in  its  op- 
portunities for  delight.  I  have  seen  the  Lido, 
where  the  Germans  bathe.  I  have  seen  Brigh- 
ton, which  is  spoiled  by  a  want  of  abandon  and 
a  paralyzing  respect  for  gentility.  Atlantic 
City  outdoes  them  all.  Atlantic  City  is  Port- 
rush,  Blackpool,  Brighton,  the  Lido,  and  Os- 
tend  rolled  into  one,  and  then,  in  all  the  essen- 
tial features  of  such  places,  raised  to  the  third 
[96] 


HOLIDAY   FEVER 

power,  so  to  speak;  multiplied  by  itself  and 
then  multiplied  by  itself  again. 

Our  friends,  as  I  have  hinted,  warned  us 
against  Atlantic  City.    They  said: 

"You  won't  enjoy  that  place." 

Or,  varying  the  emphasis  in  a  way  very  flat- 
tering to  our  reputations  for  cultivated  gen- 
tility: 

"You  won't  enjoy  that  place." 

Or,  altering  the  emphasis  once  more,  after 
we  had  explained  apologetically  that  we  went 
there  on  business: 

"You  won't  enjoy  that  place." 

When  we  persisted  in  going,  they  took  it  for 
granted  that  we  wanted  to  argue  with  them. 
Then  they  closed  the  discussion  with  an  em- 
phatic insistence  on  the  one  word  which  had 
hitherto  escaped  them. 

"You  won't  enjoy  that  place." 

One  friend,*  mistaking  us  for  cynical  stu- 
dents of  the  weaknesses  and  follies  of  human- 
ity, varied  the  warning  in  another  way: 

"You  won't,"  he  said,  "enjoy  it  now.  It's 
not  the  season." 

[97] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

They  were  all  wrong.  In  spite  of  the  pri- 
vate anxiety  which  gnawed  at  our  hearts,  we 
did  enjoy  Atlantic  City.  We  enjoyed  it  all 
the  more  because  we  went  there  out  of  season. 
It  is  our  deliberate  practice  to  visit  places  of 
this  kind  out  of  season,  and  the  date  of  the 
production  of  our  play  at  Atlantic  City  was  a 
most  fortunate  one  for  us.  We  no  longer 
want  to  revel.  The  time  for  that  is  past  for 
us,  but  we  do  want  to  understand,  and  we  seem 
to  get  nearer  that  when  the  chief  side  shows 
are  closed,  when  the  hotels  are  being  painted, 
and  when  the  sea  has  given  up  the  attempt  to 
sparkle  and  look  cheerful.  In  one  of  Mr.  An- 
thony Hope's  novels  there  is  a  statesman  of 
great  craftiness  who  warns  a  Prince  Consort 
that  he  must  not  think  he  knows  the  Queen, 
his  wife,  because  he  is  allowed  to  see  her  in 
her  stays.  I  daresay  there  is  a  good  deal  in 
the  warning.  But  I  cannot  help  feeling  that 
you  would  understand  a  queen  better  if  you 
saw  her  frequently,  let  us  say  in  her  dressing 
gown,  than  if  you  never  saw  her  except  in  her 
robes  of  state,  with  the  crown  royal  firmly 
[98] 


HOLIDAY   FEVER 

fixed  on  her  head  with  hairpins.  It  must  be 
the  same  with  pleasure  cities.  One  knows  them, 
not  well,  but  a  little  better  when  they  have 
tucked  up  their  skirts,  put  on  old  blouses  and 
turned  to  the  task  of  cleaning  up  after  the 
festivities. 

It  is  more  instructive  to  walk  along  the  broad 
sea  front  of  Blackpool  through  a  fine  chill  mist 
of  January  rain  than  to  stand  there  on  a  blaz- 
ing August  day  when  the  colliers'  week  of 
holiday  is  in  full  swing.  Deeper  thoughts 
come  to  him  who  gazes  at  the  forlorn  rows  of 
notices  that  lodgings  are  to  let  within  than 
to  him  who  hurries  through  street  after  street, 
looking  for  some  place  in  which  to  lay  his 
head.  I  am  sure  that  I  catch  the  essential 
spirit  of  the  Lido  when  the  November  sea  is 
brown,  when  the  sands  are  drab,  when  the  thou- 
sands of  bathing  boxes  stand  locked  and 
empty,  than  I  would  if  smiling  wavelets  en- 
ticed plump  Germans  to  splash  in  them  and 
bruat  paars  lingered,  indecently  affectionate, 
in  the  shadows  behind.  I  did  once,  accident- 
ally, see  Portrush  in  the  very  height  of  its  sea- 

[99] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

son,  and  it  was  a  disappointment  to  me.  Bevies 
of  girls,  hatless  but  with  hair  elaborately 
dressed,  paraded  the  streets  with  their  arms 
round  each  others'  waists.  Critical  young  men, 
in  well-creased  suits  of  the  kind  supposed  to 
be  suitable  for  yachting,  watched  other  girls 
being  taught  to  swim  in  a  deep  pool.  Nurse- 
maids helped  children  to  build  sand  castles. 
Mothers  of  forty  years  of  age  or  thereabouts 
sat  uncomfortably  knitting  with  their  backs 
against  the  rocks.  More  than  five  thousand 
people  carried  hand  cameras  about.  Lovers, 
united  for  a  day  or  two,  wrote  each  others' 
names  in  huge  letters  on  the  sand,  where  the 
retiring  tide  had  left  it  smooth  and  dry.  There 
was  too  much  to  feel,  far  too  much  to  think 
about.  I  grew  confused  and  desperate.  I 
could  not  understand.  Out  of  season  the  ob- 
server has  a  better  chance.  If  Portrush  con- 
fused me,  Atlantic  City,  seen  in  its  full  glory, 
would  have  bewildered  me  utterly.  Also  out 
of  season  I  am  not  tormented  with  vain  re- 
grets. I  am  spared  the  vexation  of  feeling 
that  a  yachting  suit,  carefully  creased,  would 
[100] 


HOLIDAY   FEVER 

no  longer  lift  my  heart  up  to  the  skies.  It  is 
not  forced  upon  me  that  my  pulses  no  longer 
throb  wildly  at  the  sight  of  girls  who  smile. 
I  do  not  think  how  sad  it  is  that  I  shall  never 
again  want  to  win  the  applause  of  a  crowd 
by  taking  a  header  into  deep  water  from  a 
giddy  height.  I  am  glad  that  we  visited  At- 
lantic City  out  of  season. 

I  forget  how  many  piers  Atlantic  City  has, 
but  it  is  unusually  rich  in  these  structures,  and 
I  have  no  doubt  that  the  builders  of  them  were 
wise.  A  pier  makes  an  irresistible  appeal  to 
the  pleasure-seeker.  He  would  rather  dance 
on  a  pier,  under  proper  shelter,  of  course,  and 
on  a  good  floor,  than  in  a  well-appointed  salon 
on  solid  land.  He  would  rather  eat  ices  on  a 
pier  than  in  an  ordinary  shop,  though  he  has 
to  pay  more  for  them,  the  cost  of  the  ice  being 
the  same  and  the  two  pence  for  entry  into  the 
enchanted  region  being  an  extra.  A  cinemato- 
graph show  draws  more  customers  if  it  is  on  a 
pier.  The  reason  of  this  is  that  the  normal 
and  properly  constituted  holiday-maker  wants 
to  get  as  much  sea  as  he  can.    When  he  is  not 

[101] 


MOM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

in  it  he  likes  to  have  it  all  round  him,  or  as 
nearly  all  round  him  as  possible  without  going 
in  a  boat.  Boats,  for  several  reasons,  are  un- 
desirable. They  sometimes  make  people  sick. 
They  are  expensive.  They  demand  an  undi- 
vided allegiance.  You  cannot  have  a  cine- 
matograph, for  instance,  in  a  boat.  The  near- 
est thing  to  a  boat  is  a  pier.  It  is  almost  sur- 
rounded by  the  sea.  That  is  why  piers  are  a 
regular  feature  of  up-to-date  pleasure  cities, 
and  why  Atlantic  City  has  so  many  of  them. 
It  is  all  to  the  credit  of  our  revelers  that  they 
love  to  be  near  the  sea,  to  feel  it  round  them, 
to  hear  it  splashing  under  their  feet.  The  sea 
is  the  cleanest  thing  there  is.  You  can  vulgar- 
ize it,  but  it  is  almost  impossible,  except  at  the 
heads  of  long  estuaries,  to  dirty  it.  It  seems 
as  if  pleasure-seekers,  who  are  also  seekers  of 
the  sea,  must  be  essentially  clean  people,  clean- 
hearted,  otherwise  they  would  not  feel  as 
strongly  impelled  as  they  evidently  do  to  get 
into  touch  with  the  ocean.  And  it  is  real  ocean 
at  Atlantic  City.  Far  out  one  sees  ships  pass- 
ing, the  lean  three-masted  schooners  of  the 
[102] 


HOLIDAY   FEVER 

American  coasting  trade,  trawlers  in  fleets, 
tramp  steamers,  companionless  things,  all  of 
these  given  to  the  real  business  of  the  sea,  not 
to  pleasure  voyaging.  The  eye  lingers  on 
them,  and  it  is  hard  afterwards  to  adjust  the 
focus  of  the  mental  vision  to  the  long  wooden 
parade,  itself  almost  a  pier,  the  flaunting  sky 
signs,  the  innumerable  tiny  shops  where  every 
kind  of  useless  thing  is  sold.  Atlantic  City 
has,  indeed,  some  boats  of  its  own,  boats  which 
go  out  from  a  haven  tucked  away  behind  the 
north  corner  of  the  parade,  and  pass  up  and 
down  across  the  sea  front.  Their  sails  are 
covered  with  huge  advertisements  of  cigar- 
ettes and  chewing  gums.  They  are  manned, 
no  doubt,  by  the  kind  of  longshoremen  who 
cater  for  the  trippers'  pleasure.  They  have  in 
them  as  passengers  whoever  in  America  cor- 
responds to  the  London  cockney.  Among 
ships  which  sail  these  are  surely  as  the  women 
of  the  streets.  But  you  cannot  altogether  de- 
grade a  boat.  She  retains  some  pathetic  rem- 
nant of  her  dignity,  even  if  you  make  her  sails 
into  advertisement  hoardings.    It  was  good  to 

[103] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

watch  these  boats,  their  masts  set  far  forward, 
after  the  American  catboat  fashion,  making 
short,  swift  tacks  among  the  sand  banks  over 
which  the  Atlantic  rollers  foamed  threaten- 
ingly. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  why  the  shops  along 
seafronts  of  places  like  Atlantic  City  are  for 
the  most  part  devoted  to  the  sale  of  useless 
things.  Picture  postcards  I  reckon  to  be  very 
nearly  useless.  They  give  a  transient  gleam 
of  pleasure  to  the  buyer,  none  at  all  to  the 
person  who  receives  them.  The  whole  class  of 
goods  called  souvenirs  is  entirely  useless.  The 
photographs  taken  by  seaside  artists  are  not 
such  as  can  give  any  satisfaction  to  the  sitters 
afterwards.  Yet  the  impulse  to  buy  these 
things  and  to  be  photographed  is  almost  irre- 
sistible. We  yielded,  not  to  the  seductions  of 
the  photographers,  nor  to  the  lure  of  the  souve- 
nir-sellers, but  with  shameless  self-abandon- 
ment to  the  postcard  shops.  I  found  it  very 
hard  to  pass  any  of  them  without  buying.  I 
still  have  many  of  the  Atlantic  City  postcards, 
and  I  look  at  them  whenever  I  feel  in  danger 
[104] 


HOLIDAY   FEVER 

of  growing  conceited  in  order  to  reduce  my- 
self to  a  proper  condition  of  humility.  We 
also — moved  by  what  strange  impulse? — 
bought  several  instruments  for  cutting  up  po- 
tatoes. Under  ordinary  circumstances  a  po- 
tato-chopper has  no  attractions  whatever  for 
me.  I  could  pass  a  shop  window  filled  with 
them  and  not  feel  one  prick  of  covetous  de- 
sire. And  Atlantic  City,  of  all  places  in  the 
world,  was  for  us — I  suppose  in  some  degree 
for  every  visitor — most  unsuitable  for  the  pur- 
chase of  kitchen  utensils.  We  knew,  even 
while  we  bought  them,  that  we  should  have  to 
haul  them  with  us  round  America  and  back 
across  the  Atlantic,  that  they  would  be  a  per- 
petual nuisance  to  us  all  the  time,  and  in  all 
probability  no  use  whatever  when  we  got  them 
home.  Yet  we  bought  them.  If  the  dollar  we 
spent  on  them  had  been  the  last  we  possessed 
we  should  have  bought  them  all  the  same. 
Such  is  the  strange  effect  of  places  like  At- 
lantic City  on  people  who  are  in  other  places 
sane  enough.  I  can  analyze  and  understand 
the  impulse  well  enough  though  I  cannot  re- 

[105] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

sist  it.  It  is  the  holiday  spirit  of  the  place 
which  gets  a  hold  on  visitors.  All  a  whole 
long  year  we  commonplace  people,  who  are  not 
millionaires,  are  spending  our  money  warily 
on  things  of  carefully  calculated  usefulness. 
We  watch  each  shilling  and  see  that  it  buys 
its  full  worth  of  something  which  will  make 
life  more  tolerable  or  pleasant.  Then  comes 
the  brief  holiday,  and  with  it  the  sudden  loos- 
ing of  all  bonds  of  ordinary  restraint.  Our 
souls  revolt  against  spending  money  on  things 
which  are  any  real  good  to  us.  We  want,  we 
are  compelled  to  fling  it  from  us,  asking  in 
exchange  nothing  but  trifles  light  as  air.  In 
desperate  reaction  against  the  tyranny  of  do- 
mestic economics  we  even  insist  on  buying 
things,  like  potato  cutters,  which  will  be  an 
actual  encumbrance  to  us  afterwards. 

Cowper  represents  John  Gilpin's  wife  as 
insisting  on  taking  her  own  wine  on  a  pleasure 
party  and  writes  of  her  that 

"Though  on  pleasure  she  was  bent 

She  had  a  frugal  mind." 
[106] 


HOLIDAY   FEVER 

I  refuse  to  believe  that  of  any  human  being, 
and  I  count  Cowper  a  good  poet  but  a  bad 
psychologist.  The  man  who  brought  a  load 
of  potato-cutters  down  to  Atlantic  City  was 
probably  not  a  poet  at  all,  but  he  had  a  pro- 
found knowledge  of  human  nature.  He  knew 
that  he  would  sell  the  things  there.  It  was 
the  place  of  all  places  in  the  world  for  his 
trade.  It  is  a  high  tribute  to  Atlantic  City 
as  a  holiday  resort  that  it  forced  us  to  buy 
two  of  these  machines.  None  of  the  other 
pleasure  cities  we  have  visited  have  had  such  a 
drastic  effect  upon  us.  Postcards  we  yield  to 
everywhere.  Even  the  dreariest  of  second- 
rate  watering  places  can  sell  them  to  us.  In 
Blackpool  I  found  a  paper-knife  irresistible. 
In  Portrush  I  once  bought  a  colored  mug. 
Atlantic  City  alone  could  have  sold  me  potato- 
choppers,  two  of  them. 

In  towns  and  rural  districts  where  men  and 
women  live  their  ordinary  lives,  work,  love  and 
ultimately  die,  it  is  the  rarest  thing  possible 
to  see  any  grown  person  wheeled  about  in  a 
perambulator  or  bath  chair.    Occasionally  some 

[107] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

pitiful  victim  of  a  surgeon's  skill  is  lifted  out 
of  the  door  of  a  nursing  home  and  placed 
tenderly  in  one  of  these  vehicles.  He  is 
wheeled  about  in  the  fresh  air  in  obedience  to 
the  doctor's  orders,  no  doubt  in  hope  that  he 
will  recover  sufficient  strength  to  make  another 
operation  possible.  But  a  bath  chair,  even  now 
when  surgery  has  become  a  recognized  form  of 
sport,  is  a  very  unusual  sight.  In  all  pleas- 
ure cities  it  is  quite  common.  In  Brighton, 
for  instance,  or  at  Bournemouth,  any  one  who 
can,  with  any  chance  of  being  believed,  repre- 
sent himself  as  an  invalid,  takes  advantage  of 
his  infirmity  to  get  himself  wheeled  about  in 
a  bath  chair.  At  international  exhibitions  and 
in  some  of  the  greater  picture  galleries  which 
are  also  pleasure  resorts  it  is  generally  possible 
to  hire  a  bath  chair.  Atlantic  City,  being,  as 
I  believe,  the  greatest  of  all  such  places,  has 
devised  a  kind  of  glorified  perambulator,  some- 
thing far  more  seductive  than  a  bath  chair. 
It  has  room  for  two  in  it,  and  this  in  itself  is 
a  great  advance.  It  has  the  neatest  imagi- 
nable hood,  which  you  can  pull  over  you  in  case 
[108] 


HOLIDAY    FEVER 

of  rain  or  if  you  desire  privacy.  It  looks  some- 
thing like  a  very  small  but  sumptuously  ap- 
pointed motor  car. 

You  need  not  even  pretend  to  be  a  cripple 
in  Atlantic  City  in  order  to  make  good  your 
right  to  enter  one  of  these  chairs.  All  sorts 
of  people,  brisk-looking  young  girls  and  men 
whose  limbs  are  plainly  sound,  are  wheeled 
about,  not  only  shamelessly  but  with  evident 
enjoyment.  There  are  immense  numbers  of 
these  vehicles,  more,  surely,  than  there  are  in- 
valids in  the  whole  world.  Out  of  season, 
when  we  saw  them,  they  are  absurdly  cheap, 
almost  the  only  thing  in  America  except  oys- 
ters and  chocolates,  and,  curiously  enough,  silk 
stockings,  which  are  cheap  judged  by  Euro- 
pean standards.  I  longed  very  earnestly  to 
go  in  one  of  these  vehicles,  but  at  the  last  mo- 
ment I  always  shrank  from  the  strangeness 
of  it.  Neither  the  taxi  of  the  London  streets 
nor  the  outside  car  of  my  native  land  ever 
made  so  strong  an  appeal  to  me  as  these  peram- 
bulators of  Atlantic  City.  I  suppose  it  was 
the  holiday  spirit  of  the  place  again.     Girls 

[109] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

and  young  men,  certainly  middle-aged  men, 
would  feel  like  fools  if  they  sat  in  perambu- 
lators anywhere  else,  but  it  is  a  sweet  and  pleas- 
ant thing — according  to  a  Latin  poet  who 
must  have  known — to  play  the  fool  in  the 
proper  place.  Atlantic  City  is  the  proper 
place.  Hence  the  enormous  numbers  of  per- 
ambulators. 

The  hotels  in  Atlantic  City  are,  most  of 
them,  as  fantastic  in  appearance  as  the  place 
itself.  I  imagine  that  the  architects  who 
planned  them  must,  before  they  began  their 
work,  have  been  kept  for  weeks  on  the  sea- 
front  and  forced  to  go  to  all  the  entertain- 
ments which  offered  themselves  by  day  and 
night.  They  were  probably  fed  on  crab  dressed 
in  various  ways  and  given  gin  rickeys  to  drink. 
Then,  when  allowed  to  drop  to  sleep  in  the 
early  morning,  they  would  naturally  dream. 
At  the  end  of  a  fortnight  or  so  of  this  treat- 
ment their  dreams  would  be  imprinted  on  their 
memories  and  they  would  draw  plans  of  hotels 
suitable  for  Atlantic  City.  Only  in  this  way, 
I  think,  can  some  of  the  newer  hotels  have 
[110] 


HOLIDAY   FEVER 

been  conceived.  They  are  not  ugly,  far  from 
it.  Crab,  dressed  as  American  cooks  dress  it, 
does  not  induce  nightmares,  nor  is  a  gin  rickey 
nearly  so  terrific  a  drink  as  it  sounds.  The 
architect  merely  dreams,  as  Coleridge  did  when 
his  Kubla  Khan  decreed  a  stately  pleasure 
dome  in  Xamadu.  But  Coleridge  dreamed  on 
opium  and  his  visions  were  of  stately  things. 
The  Atlantic  City  hotel  is  less  stately  than 
fantastic.  It  is  a  building  which  any  one  would 
declare  to  be  impossible  if  he  did  not  see  it  in 
actual  existence. 

It  will  always  be  a  source  of  regret  to  me 
that  I  did  not  stay  in  one  of  these  hotels  which 
captivated  me  utterly.  It  was  just  what,  as  a 
boy,  I  used  to  imagine  that  the  palace  of  the 
Sleeping  Beauty  must  be.  A  look  at  it  brought 
back  dear  memories  of  the  transformation 
scenes  of  pantomimes,  in  the  days  before 
transformation  scenes  went  out  of  fashion.  It 
was  colored  pale  green  all  over,  and,  looked  at 
with  half -closed  eyes,  made  me  think  of  mer- 
maids. I  am  sure  that  it  was  perfectly  de- 
lightful inside;  but  we  did  not  stay  there.     A 

cm] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

friend  had  recommended  to  us  another  hotel, 
of  great  excellence  and  comfort,  but  built  be- 
fore Atlantic  City  understood  the  proper  way 
to  treat  architects.  In  any  case  we  could  not 
have  stayed  in  the  pale  green  hotel.  It  was 
closed.  We  were  in  Atlantic  City  out  of 
season. 


[112] 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    IRON    TRAIL 

Our  luck,  which  had  up  to  that  point  been 
as  good  as  luck  could  be,  failed  us  miserably 
when  we  started  for  Chicago.  The  very  day 
before  we  left  New  York  there  was  a  blizzard 
and  a  snowstorm.  Not  in  New  York  itself. 
There  was  only  a  very  strong  wind  there.  Nor 
in  Chicago,  but  all  over  the  district  which  lay 
between.  One  train  was  held  up  for  eighteen 
hours  in  a  snowdrift.  The  last  fragments  of 
food  in  the  restaurant  car  were  consumed,  and 
the  passengers  arrived  chilled  and  desperately 
hungry  at  their  destination.  We  might  have 
been  in  that  train.  It  was  not,  indeed,  pos- 
sible for  us  to  leave  New  York  a  day  sooner 
than  we  did;  but  I  cannot  see  why  the  bliz- 
zard could  not  have  waited  a  little.  Twenty- 
four  hours'  delay  would  have  made  no  differ- 
ence to  it.    It  might  even  have  gathered  force. 

[113] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

To  us  it  would  have  made  all  the  difference  in 
the  world.  We  missed  a  great  experience. 
That  is  why  I  say  that  our  luck  failed  us  at 
this  point. 

It  would  not,  at  the  moment,  have  been  a 
pleasant  experience,  and  I  do  not  pretend  that 
we  should  have  enjoyed  either  the  cold  or  the 
hunger;  and  we  are  not  the  sort  of  people  who, 
under  such  circumstances,  secure  the  last  sar- 
dine. We  should,  owing  to  our  feebleness  in 
self-assertion,  have  been  among  the  first  to  go 
foodless.  But  afterwards  we  could  have 
thought  about  it  and  all  our  lives  told  steadily 
improving  stories  about  the  adventure.  The 
recollection  of  it  would  have  added  zest  to 
every  remaining  hour  of  comfort  in  our  lives. 
What  is  a  short  spell  of  suffering  compared 
to  such  enduring  joys?  But  in  these  matters 
we  have  been  singularly  unlucky  through  life. 
We  have  never  been  in  a  shipwreck  or  a  rail- 
way accident  or  been  forced  to  escape  from  a 
burning  house.  Only  once  did  a  horse  run 
away  with  us,  and  it  fell  almost  immediately 
after  making  its  dash  for  liberty.  No  burglar 
[114] 


THE    IRON    TRAIL 

has  roused  us  to  do  battle  with  him  in  the 
middle  of  the  night.  It  seems  hard,  when  we 
have  been  denied  all  the  great  adventures  of 
life,  to  miss  by  the  narrow  margin  of  a  single 
day  the  minor  excitement  of  being  snowed  up 
in  a  train. 

However,  it  is  useless  to  complain.  The 
thing  was  not  to  be  and  it  was  not.  Our  jour- 
ney was  commonplace  and  unadventurous.  We 
hired  what  is  called  a  drawing-room  car  on  our 
train.  This  is  an  extravagant  thing  to  do. 
For  people  of  our  humble  means  it  is  almost 
criminally  reckless.  Some  day  when  we  can- 
not afford  to  have  our  boots  re-soled,  when  we 
are  looking  at  the  loaves  in  the  windows  of 
bakers'  shops  with  vain  desire,  when  we  have 
neither  money  nor  credit  left  to  us,  we  shall 
think  with  poignant  regret  of  the  huge  sums 
we  spent  on  that  drawing-room  car.  We  shall 
be  sorry,  at  least  one  of  us  will  be  sorry  that 
we  were  not  more  careful  when  he  or  she,  the 
survivor,  cannot  afford  a  simple  tombstone  to 
mark  the  grave  of  the  other.  But  at  the  mo- 
ment the  money,  in  spite  of  Atlantic  City, 

[115] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

being  actually  in  our  pockets,  we  felt  that  the 
drawing-room  car  was  an  absolute  necessity. 
I  should  take  it  again  if  I  were  going  to  Chi- 
cago. But  then  we  are  not  yet  reduced  to 
penury. 

The  alternative  to  a  drawing-room  car,  on 
most  trains,  is  a  section  in  a  Pullman  sleeping- 
car.  Against  this  we  rose  in  revolt.  I  cannot 
imagine  how  the  Americans,  who  are  in  many 
ways  much  more  highly  civilized  than  Euro- 
peans, tolerate  the  existence  of  Pullman  sleep- 
ing-cars. I  am  not  physically — though  I  am 
in  every  other  way — an  exceptionally  modest 
man.  I  have,  for  instance,  no  objection  to 
mixed  bathing,  and  it  does  not  make  me  blush 
to  meet  one  of  the  housemaids  in  a  hotel  when, 
dressed  only  in  my  pajamas,  I  am  searching 
for  the  bathroom.  But  I  do  object  to  un- 
dressing in  the  corridor  of  a  Pullman  sleeping- 
car,  and  I  cannot,  not  being  a  professional  ac- 
robat, undress  in  my  berth.  For  a  lady  the 
thing  is,  of  course,  much  worse.  Besides  the 
undressing  and  the  still  more  difficult  dressing 
again,  there  is  the  business  of  washing  in  the 
[116] 


THE    IRON    TRAIL 

morning',  washing  and,  for  most  men,  shaving. 
You  go  into  a  sort  of  dressing-room  to  do 
that.  There  are  not  nearly  basins  enough. 
There  is  not  room  enough.  Somebody  is  sure 
to  walk  on  your  sponge,  will  walk  on  your 
toothbrush,  too,  unless  you  happen  to  be  a 
clerk,  and  therefore  practiced  in  the  art  of 
holding  things  behind  your  ear. 

I  think  Americans  are  beginning  to  recog- 
nize that  these  sleeping-cars  are  barbarous.  I 
met  one  lady  who  told  me  that  she  would  al- 
ways gladly  sacrifice  a  new  dress  in  order  to 
spend  the  money  on  a  drawing-room  car.  I 
entirely  sympathize  with  her;  but,  even  if  you 
are  prepared  for  these  heroic  extravagances, 
you  cannot  always  get  a  drawing-room  car. 
There  was  one  occasion  on  which  we  failed, 
though  we  telegraphed  three  days  before  to 
engage  one.  On  some  of  the  best  trains  of 
the  best  lines  there  are  also  what  are  called 
"compartments."  These  are  comparable  in 
comfort  to  the  cabins  of  the  International 
Company  of  Wagon  Lits  on  the  Continental 
trains  de  luxe,  though  inferior  to  the  London 

[117] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

and  North  Western  Railway  Company's  sleep- 
er. No  one  has  any  right  to  grumble  who 
secures  a  compartment.  Unfortunately,  it  is 
not  every  railway  company  which  has  them, 
and  it  is  by  no  means  every  train  on  which  they 
are  run. 

The  drawing-room  car,  when  you  get  it,  is 
in  itself  a  comfortable  thing  to  travel  in. 
There  is  a  good  deal  of  room  in  it.  There 
is  satisfactory  lavatory  accommodation.  The 
attendants  are  civil  and  competent.  Any 
one  who  can  sleep  in  a  train  at  all  could  sleep 
in  a  drawing-room  car  if  only  he  were  not 
waked  up  every  time  the  train  stops  or  starts. 
Trains  must  stop  occasionally,  of  course.  But 
there  is  no  real  need  for  emphasizing  the  stops 
as  American  trains  do.  It  is  possible — I  know 
this,  because  both  the  French  and  English 
trains  do  it — to  stop  without  giving  inexperi- 
enced passengers  the  impression  that  there  has 
been  a  collision.  Stopping  is  not  a  thing  a 
train  ought  to  be  proud  of.  There  is  no  reason 
why  the  attention  of  passengers  should  be 
drawn  to  it  forcibly.  For  starting  with  a  bang 
[118] 


THE    IRON    TRAIL 

there  is,  of  course,  more  excuse.  To  start  at 
all  is  a  triumph.  It  is  a  victory  of  mind  over 
inert  matter,  and  any  one  who  accomplishes  it 
wants,  naturally  and  properly,  to  be  admired. 
I  can  understand  the  annoyance  of  the  train, 
conscious  of  being  able  to  start,  at  feeling  that 
its  passengers,  who  ought  to  be  praising  it,  are 
perhaps  sound  asleep.  Yet  I  cannot  help 
thinking  that  all  the  admiration  any  train 
ought  to  want  might  be  secured  without  ex- 
cessive violence.  Suppose  a  notice  were  hung 
up  in  every  coach:  "This  train  will  stop  twice 
during  the  night  and  after  each  stop  will  start 
again.  Passengers  are  requested  to  realize 
that  this  is  not  an  easy  thing  to  do.  They  will 
therefore  admire  the  train."  No  passenger 
with  a  spark  of  decent  feeling  in  him  would 
refuse  an  appreciative  pat  to  the  engine  in 
the  morning.  We  do  as  much  for  horses  who 
cannot  drag  us  nearly  so  far  or  half  so  fast. 
We  do  it  for  dogs  who  do  not  drag  us  at  all, 
only  fetch  things  for  us.  We  should  certainly 
treat  engines  with  the  same  kindness  if  they 
were  a  little  tenderer  to  us.    But  I  refuse  to 

[119] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

pat,  stroke  or  in  any  way  fondle  an  engine 
which,  out  of  mere  vanity,  wakes  me  up  by 
starting  boisterously. 

We  ran  during  the  night  through  the  tail 
of  the  snowstorm  which  had  stopped  the  train 
the  day  before.  We  had  left  New  York  in 
pleasant  autumn  weather,  on  one  of  those  days 
which,  without  being  cold,  has  an  exhilarating 
nip  about  it.  We  arrived  in  Chicago  in  what 
seemed  to  us  midsummer  weather,  though  I 
believe  it  was  not  really  hot  for  Chicago.  We 
passed  on  our  way  through  a  snow-covered 
district  and  had  the  greatest  difficulty  in  keep- 
ing warm  during  the  night.  This  is  one  of 
the  advantages  of  traveling  in  America.  The 
distances  are  so  immense  that  in  the  course  of 
a  single  journey  you  have  the  chance  of  trying 
several  kinds  of  climate.  In  England  you  get 
the  same  result  by  staying  in  one  place.  But 
the  American  plan  is  much  better.  There, 
having  discovered  a  climate  which  suits  you, 
you  can  settle  down  in  it  with  a  fair  amount 
of  confidence  that  it  will  remain  what  it  is  for 
a  week  or  two  at  a  time.  In  England,  whether 
[120] 


THE    IRON    TRAIL 

you  travel  about  or  stay  still,  you  have  got  to 
accustom  yourself  to  continual  variety. 
^  After  breakfast,  when  the  train  had  passed 
the  snow-covered  region  and  the  air  became  a 
little  warmer,  we  sat  on  the  platform  at  the 
end  of  the  observation  car  and  looked  out  at 
the  country  through  which  we  were  going. 
Nothing  could  conceivably  be  more  monoto- 
nous. The  land  was  quite  flat,  the  railway  line 
was  absolutely  straight.  The  train  sped  on 
at  a  uniform  pace  of  about  forty  miles  an 
hour.  As  far  back  as  the  eye  could  see  were 
the  rails  of  the  track,  narrowing  and  narrow- 
ing until  they  looked  like  a  single  sharp  line, 
ruled  with  remorseless  precision  from  some 
point  at  an  infinite  distance  in  the  east.  On 
each  side  of  us  were  broad  spaces  of  flat  land, 
reaching,  still  flat,  to  the  horizons  north  and 
south  of  us.  Every  half -hour  or  so  we  passed 
a  village,  a  collection  of  meanly  conceived,  two- 
storied  houses  with  a  hideous  little  church 
standing  just  apart  from  them.  Hour  after 
hour  we  rushed  on  with  no  other  change  of 
scenery,  no  mountain,  no  lake,  no  river,  just 

[121] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

flat  land,  with  a  straight  line  ruled  on  it.  It 
was  incredibly  monotonous.  I  suppose  that 
the  life  of  the  people  who  inhabit  that  region 
is  as  interesting,  in  reality,  as  any  other  life. 
The  seasons  change  there,  I  hope.  Harvests 
ripen,  cows  calve,  men  die;  but  on  us,  strang- 
ers from  a  very  different  land,  the  unvarying 
flatness  of  it  all  lay  like  an  intolerable  weight. 
Yet  that  journey  gave  me,  more  than  any- 
thing else  I  saw,  a  sense  of  the  greatness  of  the 
American  people.  There  is,  I  suppose,  some 
one  thing  in  the  history  of  every  nation  which 
impresses  the  man  who  realizes,  even  dimly, 
the  meaning  of  it,  more  than  anything  else 
does.  Elizabethan  England's  buccaneering 
adventures  to  the  Spanish  main  seem  to  me 
to  make  intelligible  the  peculiar  greatness  of 
England  more  than  anything  else  her  people 
have  ever  done.  Revolutionary  France  in  arms 
against  Europe  is  France  at  her  most  glori- 
ous, with  her  special  splendor  at  its  brightest. 
So  my  imagination  fixes  on  America's  settle- 
ment of  her  vast  central  plain  as  the  greatest 
thing  in  her  story.  Her  fight  for  independ- 
[122] 


THE    IRON    TRAIL 

ence  was  fine,  of  course;  but  many  other  na- 
tions have  fought  such  wars  and  won,  or,  just 
as  finely,  lost.  Her  civil  war  stirs  thoughts  of 
greatness  in  any  one  who  reads  it.  But  this 
tremendous  journey  of  the  American  people 
from  the  east  to  the  Mississippi  shores,  half- 
way across  a  continent,  was  something  greater 
than  any  war. 

First,  no  doubt,  hunters  went  out  from  the 
narrow  strip  of  settled  seaboard  land.  They 
pushed  their  adventurous  way  across  the  Alle- 
ghanies,  finding  passes,  camping  in  strange 
fastnesses.  They  came  upon  the  westward- 
flowing  waters  of  the  great  network  of  rivers 
which  drain  into  the  Mississippi.  They  made 
their  long,  dim  trails.  They  fought,  with 
equal  cunning,  bands  of  Indian  braves.  They 
returned,  in  love  with  wildness,  weaned  from 
the  ways  of  civilization,  to  tell  their  tales  of 
strange  places  by  the  firesides  of  sober  men. 
Or  they  did  not  return.  They  were  great  men, 
and  their  achievements  very  great,  but  not  the 
greatest. 

More  wonderful  was  the  accomplishment  of 

[123] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

those  long  streams  of  settlers  who  crossed  Vir- 
ginia and  Pennsylvania  to  find  the  upper 
reaches  of  the  waterways  which  should  lead 
and  bear  them  mile  by  mile  to  the  Mississippi 
shore.  It  is  barely  a  century  since  these  men, 
home  lovers,  not  wanderers  with  the  call  of 
the  wild  in  their  ears,  home  builders,  not  hunt- 
ers, went  floating  in  rude  arks  down  the  Ohio, 
the  Cumberland,  the  Tennessee.  With  unim- 
aginable courage  and  faith  they  took  with  them 
women,  children,  cattle,  and  household  plen- 
ishing. Somewhere  each  ark  grounded  and 
the  work  of  settlement  began.  I  saw  the 
woods  which  stretch  for  miles  over  rolling 
hills  and  round  lakes  beyond  that  curious  col- 
ony of  very  wealthy  people  at  Tuxedo.  My 
imagination  pictured  for  me,  as  I  gazed  at 
these  woods,  the  outpost  settlements  of  one 
hundred  years  ago.  The  "half-faced  camp," 
rudest  of  the  dwellings  of  civilized  man,  was 
built.  Trees  were  "girdled"  or  cut  down  with 
patient  toil.  A  small  clearing  was  made  amid 
the  interminable  miles  of  forest  land.  I  im- 
agined the  men,  lean  and  grim,  the  anxious 
[124] 


THE    IRON    TRAIL 

women,  ever  on  the  alert  because  of  the  per- 
petual menace  of  the  Indians  who  might  lurk 
a  stone's  throw  off  among  the  shadows  of  the 
trees. 

We  can  guess  at  the  satisfaction  of  each  tri- 
umph won ;  the  day  when  the  lean-to  shed  with 
its  open  side  gave  place  to  the  log  hut,  still 
rude  enough;  the  day  when  some  great  tree, 
sapless  from  its  "girdling,"  was  hewn  down 
at  last ;  the  adding  of  acre  after  acre  of  cleared 
land;  the  incredibly  swift  growth  of  villages 
and  towns;  the  pushing  out  of  settlements, 
south  and  north,  into  yet  stranger  wilder- 
nesses, away  from  the  friendly  banks  of  the 
waterways.  The  courage  and  endurance  of 
these  settlers  must  have  been  far  beyond  that 
required  of  soldiers,  explorers  or  adventurers. 
Step  by  step,  almost  literally  step  by  step, 
they  made  this  wonderful  journey,  conquer- 
ing every  acre  as  they  passed  it.  Yet  we  know 
very  little  about  them.  Homer  made  a  list 
of  the  ships  which  sailed  for  Troy.  Who  has 
chronicled  the  arks  and  rafts  of  these  still 
braver  men?     Camoens  wrote  his  Luciad  to 

[125] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

glorify  the  voyage  of  Vasco  da  Gama  round 
the  African  coast.  All  England's  Elizabethan 
literature  is,  rightly  understood,  an  interpre- 
tation of  the  spirit  of  Drake  and  Raleigh.  No 
one  has  written  an  epic  of  these  American 
pioneer  settlers.  Yet  surely  if  ever  men  de- 
served such  commemoration  they  did. 

Our  train  ran  on  and  on  at  forty  miles  an 
hour,  and  my  spirit  was  cowed  by  the  vast 
monotony.  What  sort  of  spirit  had  the  men 
who  faced  it  first,  to  whom  the  conquest  of  a 
mile  was  a  great  achievement,  to  whom  it  must 
have  seemed  that  there  was  no  end  to  it  at  all? 
I  wonder  whether  there  was  in  them  some  great 
kind  of  faith,  of  which  we  have  lost  the  secret 
now,  a  belief  that  God  Himself  had  bidden 
them  go  forward?  Or  perhaps  there  was 
strong  in  them  that  instinct  for  the  conquest 
of  nature  which,  whether  he  knew  it  or  not, 
has  always  been  in  man,  which  has  made  him 
greater  than  the  beasts,  only  a  little  lower  than 
the  angels.  Or  perhaps  it  was  hunger  for  life 
itself,  not  for  a  fuller  or  a  richer  life,  but  for 
the  bare  material  existence,  which  sent  them 
[126] 


THE    IRON    TRAIL 

on,  threatened  by  want  in  civilized  places,  to 
look  for  ground  where  things  would  grow, 
where  the  fruit  of  their  toil  would  not  be  taken 
from  them.  To  find  a  parallel  for  the  achieve- 
ment of  these  men  the  mind  must  go  back  to 
dim  ages  before  history  began,  when  our  an- 
cestors— why  and  how  we  cannot  guess — 
learned  to  light  fires,  chip  flints,  snare  beasts, 
make  laws ;  groped  through  a  palpable  obscur- 
ity toward  justice  and  right,  fought  those  im- 
possible battles  of  theirs  which  have  won  for 
us  the  kingship  of  the  world.  Theirs  was  an 
achievement  greater  indeed  than  that  of  Amer- 
ica's pioneer  settlers,  but  of  the  same  kind. 

I  went  to  church  in  New  York  on  Thanks- 
giving Day,  and  I,  though  a  stranger,  was 
given  the  privilege  of  reading  aloud  that  won- 
derful chapter  in  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy 
which  tells  how  God  led  His  people  through  a 
great  and  terrible  wilderness.  I  forgot,  as  I 
read  it,  all  about  Israel  and  Sinai.  I  remem- 
bered how  the  people  among  whom  I  was  had 
journeyed  across  their  vast  continent.  They 
are  not  my  people.     Their  glory  is  none  of 

[127] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

mine.  Their  Thanksgiving  Day  had  nothing 
to  do  with  me,  but  emotion  thrilled  me  strange- 
ly as  I  read.  I  wondered,  thanked,  and  bent 
my  head  with  fear,  so  great  was  the  past  which 
is  remembered,  so  terrible  the  warning  which 
follows  the  recital.  "Beware  lest  thou  at  all 
forget  the  Lord  thy  God." 

The  observation  car,  with  its  sheltered  plat- 
form at  the  back  of  it,  is  a  pleasant  feature  of 
the  long-distance  American  train,  one  which 
might,  with  advantage,  be  copied  in  Europe. 
But  the  best  thing,  the  most  wholly  satisfac- 
tory, about  American  railway  traveling  is  that 
certain  trains  are  fined  for  being  late.  This 
happens  in  England,  I  think,  certainly  in  Ire- 
land, in  the  case  of  mail  trains.  It  does  them 
a  lot  of  good,  but  gives  small  gratification  to 
the  suffering  passengers,  because  the  Post- 
Office  authorities  take  the  money.  In  Amer- 
ica the  passengers  get  the  fine.  Our  train  was 
an  hour  and  a  quarter  late  in  getting  to  Chi- 
cago, and  we  were  handed  a  dollar  each  as 
compensation  for  our  annoyance.  I  felt  sor- 
rier than  ever  that  we  had  not  traveled  the  day 
[128] 


THE    IRON   TRAIL 

before  in  the  train  that  was  delayed  by  the 
blizzard.  Then  we  should  have  got  eighteen 
dollars  each  and  been  able  to  buy  several  splen- 
did dinners  to  make  up  for  our  starvation. 

It  is  not  every  train  in  America  which  pays 
for  unpunctuality  in  this  way.  I  am  not  sure 
that  the  rule  applies  even  to  express  trains  all 
over  the  continent,  nor  do  I  know  whether  the 
railway  companies  deal  thus  justly  with  their 
passengers  of  their  own  free  will.  It  seems 
very  unlikely  that  they  do.  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  there  must  be  a  law  on  the  subject, 
either  a  law  made  by  the  State  of  Illinois  or, 
as  I  hope,  one  made  by  Congress  itself.  How- 
ever this  may  be,  I  have  no  doubt  at  all  that  the 
law,  if  it  is  a  law,  ought  to  be  made  and  strictly 
enforced  in  every  civilized  country.  I  traveled 
once  by  a  London  &  North  Western  Railway 
express  train,  which  was  three  hours  late;  and 
I  suffered  a  loss,  was  actually  obliged  to  dis- 
perse no  less  a  sum  than  £2-18-0  in  conse- 
quence. I  tried  in  vain  to  make  the  company 
see  that  it  ought  to  pay  me  back  that  <£2-18-0. 
I  never  got  a  penny.    Yet  the  offense  of  the 

[129] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

American  company  was  a  trifling  one  in  com- 
parison. It  was  one  hour  and  a  quarter  late 
in  a  journey  supposed  to  occupy  twenty-three 
hours.  The  London  &  North  Western  Rail- 
way took  nine  hours  over  a  journey  which  it 
professed  to  do  in  six.  I  cannot  help  feeling 
that  the  English  company  would  have  got  its 
train  to  London  on  that  occasion  much  more 
rapidly  if  it  had  known  beforehand  that  it 
might  have  to  pay  each  passenger  fifteen  shill- 
ings at  Euston.  We  hear  a  great  deal  on  this 
side  of  the  Atlantic  about  the  scandalous  way 
in  which  American  railway  magnates  control 
American  legislation.  It  appears  that  occa- 
sionally, at  all  events,  the  legislators  exercise  a 
very  salutary  control  over  the  railways. 

Charges  of  corrupting  senates  are  certainly 
made  against  American  railway  directors. 
They  may  conceivably  be  true.  If  they  are  it 
seems  desirable,  in  the  interests  of  the  pas- 
sengers, that  some  of  the  British  railways 
would  take  in  hand  the  task  of  corrupting  the 
House  of  Commons  in  the  American  way.  The 
morals  of  that  assembly  could  in  no  case  be 
[130] 


THE    IRON    TRAIL 

much  worse  than  they  are,  so  there  would  be 
little  loss  in  that  way,  while  the  gain  to  the 
public  would  be  immense  if  trains,  even  a  few 
of  the  best  trains,  were  forced  under  heavy 
penalties  to  keep  time. 


[131] 


CHAPTER   VI 

advance,  Chicago! 

Chicago  possesses  one  exceedingly  good 
hotel.  We  know  this  by  experience.  The 
other  hotels  in  the  city  may  be  equally  good, 
but  we  shall  never  try  them.  Having  found 
one  almost  perfect  hotel,  we  shall,  whenever 
we  visit  that  city  again,  go  back  to  it.  But  I 
expect  that  all  the  other  hotels  there  are  good 
too,  very  good ;  for  Chicago  appears  to  take  an 
interest  in  its  hotels.  In  most  cities,  perhaps 
in  all  other  cities,  hotels  are  good  or  bad  ac- 
cording as  their  managers  are  efficient  or  the 
reverse.  The  city  itself  does  not  care  about 
its  hotels  any  more  than  it  cares  about  its  boot- 
makers. A  London  bootmaker  might  provide 
very  bad  leather  for  the  soles  of  a  stranger's 
boots.  "The  Times"  would  not  deal  with  that 
bootmaker  in  a  special  article.  It  might  be 
[132] 


ADVANCE,    CHICAGO! 

very  difficult  to  obtain  hot  water  in  one  of  the 
great  London  hotels — I  have  seen  it  stated,  on 
the  authority  of  an  American,  that  it  is  very 
difficult — but  London  itself  does  not  care 
whether  it  is  or  not.  The  soling  of  boots  and 
the  comfort  of  casual  guests  are,  according  to 
the  generally  prevailing  view,  affairs  best 
settled  betwen  the  people  directly  interested, 
the  traveler  on  the  one  hand  and  the  boot- 
maker or  manager  on  the  other.  No  one  else 
thinks  that  he  has  a  right  to  interfere. 

Chicago  takes  a  different  view.  It  has  a 
sense  of  civic  responsibility  for  its  hotels,  pos- 
sibly also  for  its  bootmakers.  I  did  not  try  the 
bootmakers  and  therefore  cannot  say  anything 
certainly  about  them.  But  I  am  sure  about 
the  hotels.  It  happened  that  there  was  a  let- 
ter awaiting  my  arrival  at  the  hotel,  the  very 
excellent  hotel,  in  which  we  stayed.  This  let- 
ter was  not  immediately  delivered  to  me.  I 
believe  that  I  ought  to  have  asked  for  it,  that 
the  hotel  manager  expects  guests  to  ask  for 
letters,  and  that  I  had  no  reasonable  ground 
of  complaint  when  the  letter  was  not  delivered 

[133] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

to  me.  Nor  did  I  complain.  I  am  far  too 
meek  a  man  to  complain  about  anything  in  a 
large  hotel.  I  am  desperately  afraid  of  hotel 
officials.  They  are  all  much  grander  than  I  am 
and  occupy  far  more  important  positions  in 
the  world.  I  should  not  grumble  if  a  princess 
trod  on  my  toe.  Princesses  have  a  right,  ow- 
ing to  the  splendour  of  their  position,  to 
trample  on  me.  But  I  would  rather  grumble 
at  a  princess  than  complain  to  a  head  waiter  or 
the  clerk  in  charge  of  the  offices  of  a  large  ho- 
tel. Princesses  are  common  clay  compared  to 
these  functionaries.  But  even  if  I  were  a  very 
brave  man,  and  even  if  I  believed  that  one  man 
was  as  good  as  another  and  I  the  equal  of  the 
manager  of  a  large  hotel,  I  should  not  have 
complained  about  the  failure  to  deliver  that  let- 
ter. The  hotel  when  we  were  there  was  very 
full,  and  full  of  the  most  important  kind  of 
people,  doctors.  It  was  not  to  be  expected  that 
such  a  trifle  as  a  letter  for  me  would  engage  the 
attention  of  anybody. 

Next  morning  there  was  a  paragraph  in  one 
of  the  leading  Chicago  papers  about  my  let- 
[134] 


ADVANCE,    CHICAGO! 

ter  and  the  manager  of  the  hotel  was  told 
plainly,  in  clear  print,  that  he  must  do  his 
business  better  than  he  did.  I  was  astonished 
when  the  manager,  taking  me  solemnly  apart, 
showed  me  the  paragraph,  astonished  and  ter- 
ror-stricken. I  apologized  at  once  for  daring 
to  have  a  letter  addressed  to  me  at  his  hotel. 
I  apologized  for  not  asking  for  it  when  I  ar- 
rived. I  apologized  for  the  trouble  his  staff 
had  been  put  to  in  carrying  the  letter  up  to  my 
room  in  the  end.  Then  I  stopped  apologizing 
because,  to  my  amazement,  the  manager  be- 
gan. He  apologized  so  amply  that  I  came 
gradually  to  feel  as  if  I  were  not  entirely  in 
the  wrong.  Also  I  realized  why  it  is  that  this 
hotel — and  no  doubt  all  the  others  in  Chicago 
— is  so  superlatively  good.  Chicago  keeps  an 
eye  on  them.  The  press  is  alive  to  the  fact  that 
every  citizen  of  a  great  city,  even  a  hotel  man- 
ager, should  do  not  merely  his  duty  but  more, 
should  practice  counsels  of  perfection,  per- 
form works  of  supererogation,  deliver  letters 
which  are  not  asked  for. 

The  incident  is  in  itself  unimportant,  but 

[135] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

it  seems  to  me  to  illustrate  the  spirit  of  Chi- 
cago. It  is  a  great  city  and  is  determined  to 
get  things  done  right.  It  has  besides,  and  this 
is  its  rare  distinction,  an  unfaltering  convic- 
tion that  it  can  get  things  done  right.  Most 
communities  are  conscious  of  some  limitations 
of  their  powers.  For  Chicago  there  are  no 
limitations  at  all  anywhere.  Whatever  ought 
to  be  done  Chicago  will  do.  Nothing  is  too 
small,  nothing  too  great  to  be  attempted  and 
carried  through.  It  may  be  an  insignificant 
matter,  like  the  comfort  of  a  helpless  and  fool- 
ish stranger.  It  may  be  a  problem  against 
which  civilized  society  has  broken  its  teeth  for 
centuries,  like  the  evil  of  prostitution.  Chicago 
is  convinced  that  it  can  be  got  right  and  Chi- 
cago means  to  do  it. 

I  admire  this  sublime  self-confidence.  I 
ought  always  to  be  happy  when  I  am  among 
men  who  have  it,  because  I  was  born  in  Bel- 
fast and  the  first  air  I  breathed  was  charged 
with  exactly  this  same  intensely  bracing  ozone 
of  strong- willedness. 

Belfast  is  very  like  Chicago.  If  a  Belfast 
[136] 


ADVANCE,    CHICAGO! 

man  were  taken  while  asleep  and  transported 
on  a  magic  carpet  to  Chicago,  he  would  not, 
on  waking  up,  feel  that  anything  very  strange 
had  happened  to  him.  The  outward  circum- 
stances of  life  would  indeed  be  different,  but 
he  would  find  himself  in  all  essential  respects 
at  home.  He  would  talk  to  men  who  said  "We 
will,"  with  a  conviction  that  their  "We  will" 
is  the  last  word  which  can  or  need  be  said  on 
any  subject;  just  as  he  had  all  his  life  before 
talked  to  men  who  said,  "We  won't,"  with  the 
same  certainty  that  beyond  their  "We  won't" 
there  was  nothing. 

Chicago  is,  indeed,  greater  than  Belfast,  not 
merely  in  the  number  of  its  inhabitants  and 
the  importance  of  its  business,  but  in  the  fact 
that  it  asserts  where  Belfast  denies.  It  is  a 
greater  and  harder  thing  to  say  "Yes"  than 
"No."  But  there  is  a  spiritual  kinship  between 
the  two  places  in  that  both  of  them  mean  what 
they  say  and  are  quite  sure  that  they  can  make 
good  their  "yes"  and  "no"  against  the  world. 
If  all  the  rest  of  America  finds  itself  up 
against  Chicago  as  the  British  empire  is  at 

[137] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

present  up  against  Belfast,  the  result  will  be 
the  bewilderment  of  the  rest  of  America. 

I  was  in  Chicago  only  for  a  short  time.  I 
did  not  see  any  of  the  things  which  visitors 
usually  see  there.  I  went  there  with  certain 
prejudices.  I  had  read,  like  every  one  else, 
Mr.  Upton  Sinclair's  account  of  the  slaughter 
of  pigs  in  Chicago.  I  had  read  several  times 
over  the  late  Mr.  Frank  Norris's  "The  Pit." 
I  had  read  and  heard  many  things  about  the 
wonderful  work  of  Miss  Jane  Addams.  I  had 
a  vague  idea  that  Chicago  was  both  better  and 
worse  than  other  places,  that  God  and  the  devil 
had  joined  battle  there  more  definitely  than 
elsewhere,  that  the  points  at  issue  were  plainer, 
that  there  was  something  nearer  to  a  straight 
fight  in  Chicago  between  good  and  evil  than 
we  find  in  other  places. 

"We  are  here,"  says  Matthew  Arnold,  "as  on 

a  darkling  plain, 
Swept  with  confused  alarms  of  struggle  and 

flight, 
Where  ignorant  armies  strive  by  night." 

[138] 


ADVANCE,    CHICAGO! 

In  Chicago  I  felt  the  armies  would  be  less 
ignorant,  the  alarms  a  little  less  confused.  I 
am  not  sure  now  that  this  is  so.  It  may  be 
quite  as  hard  in  Chicago  as  it  is  anywhere  else 
to  find  out  quite  certainly  what  is  right ;  which, 
in  certain  tangled  matters,  is  God's  side  and 
which  the  devil's.  But  I  do  not  believe  that 
the  Chicago  man,  any  more  than  the  Belfast 
man,  is  tormented  with  the  paralysis  of  inde- 
cision. He  may  and  very  likely  will  do  a  great 
many  things  which  will  turn  out  in  the  end 
not  to  be  good  things.  But  he  will  do  them 
quite  unfalteringly.  When,  having  done  them, 
he  has  time  to  look  round  at  the  far  side  of 
them,  he  may  discover  that  there  was  some 
mistake  about  them  somewhere.  Then  he  will 
undo  them  and  do  something  else  instead  with 
the  same  vigorous  conviction.  He  will,  in  any 
case,  keep  on  doing  things  and  believing  in 
them. 

I  was  in  a  large  bookseller's  shop  while  I 
was  in  Chicago.  It  was  so  large  that  it  was 
impossible  to  discover  with  any  certainty  what 
pleases  Chicago  most  in  the  way  of  literature. 

[139] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

There  seemed  to  me  to  be  copies  of  every 
book  I  had  ever  heard  of  waiting  there  for 
buyers,  and,  I  presume,  they  would  not  wait 
unless  buyers  were  likely  to  come.  But  I  was 
struck  with  the  very  large  number  of  books 
dealing  with  those  subjects  which  may  be 
classed  roughly  under  the  term  Eugenics. 
There  were  more  of  these  books  in  that  shop 
than  I  had  ever  seen  before.  I  should  not  have 
guessed  that  there  were  so  many  in  the  world. 
I  may,  of  course,  have  received  a  wrong  im- 
pression. This  particular  shop  had  its  books 
arranged  according  to  subjects.  There  was 
not,  as  generally  in  England  and  Ireland,  a 
counter  devoted  to  the  latest  publications,  or 
a  series  of  shelves  given  over  to  books  priced 
at  a  shilling.  In  this  shop  all  books  on  eco- 
nomics, for  example,  whether  old  or  new,  cheap 
or  dear,  were  in  one  place;  all  books  on  music 
in  another ;  and  so  forth.  The  idea  underlying 
the  arrangement  being  that  a  customer  knows 
more  or  less  the  subject  he  wants  to  read  about 
and  is  pleased  to  find  all  books  on  that  subject 
ready  waiting  for  him  in  rows.  Our  idea,  on 
[140] 


ADVANCE,    CHICAGO! 

the  other  hand,  that  which  underlies  the  ar- 
rangements of  our  shops,  is  that  a  customer 
wants,  perhaps  a  new  book,  perhaps  a  ten-and- 
sixpenny  book,  perhaps  a  shilling  book,  with- 
out minding  much  what  the  book  is  about.  He 
is  best  suited  by  finding  all  the  new  books  in 
one  place,  all  the  ten-and-sixpenny  books  in 
another,  and  all  the  shilling  books  in  a  third. 
I  do  not  know  which  is  the  better  plan,  but 
that  adopted  in  the  Chicago  shop  has  the  effect 
of  making  the  casual  customer  realize  the  very 
large  number  of  books  there  are  on  every  sub- 
ject. I  may  therefore  have  been  deceived 
about  the  popularity  of  books  on  eugenics  in 
Chicago.  There  may  be  no  more  on  sale  there 
than  elsewhere.  But  I  think  there  are.  Of 
some  of  these  books  there  were  very  large  num- 
bers, twenty  or  thirty  copies  of  a  single  book 
all  standing  in  a  row.  Plainly  it  was  antici- 
pated that  there  were  in  Chicago  twenty  or 
thirty  people  who  would  want  that  particular 
book.  I  never,  in  any  book  shop  elsewhere, 
saw  more  than  five  or  six  copies  of  a  eugenic 
book  in  stock  at  the  same  time.     I  also  no- 

[141] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

ticed  that  the  majority  of  these  books  were 
cheap;  not  detailed  and  elaborate  treatises  on, 
let  us  say,  Weissmannism  and  the  mechanism 
of  heredity;  but  short  handbooks,  statements 
of  conclusions  supposed  to  be  arrived  at  and 
practical  advice  suited  to  plain  people.  I 
formed  the4  opinion  that  the  study  of  eugenics 
is  popular  in  Chicago,  more  popular  than  else- 
where, and  that  a  good  many  people  believe 
that  some  good  is  to  be  got  out  of  knowing 
what  science  has  to  teach  on  these  subjects. 

I  was  told  by  a  man  who  ought  to  have 
known  that  these  books  are  steadily  becoming 
more  popular.  The  demand  for  them  was 
very  small  five  years  ago.  It  is  very  large 
now  and  becoming  steadily  larger.  This 
seems  to  me  a  very  interesting  thing.  For  a 
long  time  people  were  content  just  to  take 
children  as  they  came,  and  they  did  not  bother 
much  about  the  hows  and  the  whys  of  the  busi- 
ness. Grown-up  men  and  women  did  not  in- 
deed believe  that  storks  dropped  babies  down 
chimneys  or  that  doctors  brought  them  in 
bags.  But  they  might  just  as  well  have  be- 
[142] 


ADVANCE,    CHICAGO! 

lieved  these  things  for  all  the  difference  such 
knowledge  as  they  had  made  in  their  way  of 
conducting  the  business.  Their  philosophy 
was  summed  up  in  a  proverb.  "When  God 
sends  the  mouth  He  sends  the  food  to  fill  it." 
To  go  further  into  details  struck  people, 
twenty  years  ago,  as  rather  a  disgusting  pro- 
ceeding. 

Now  we  have  all,  everywhere,  grown  out  of 
this  primitive  innocence.  We  have  been  driven 
away  from  our  old  casual  ways  of  reproducing 
ourselves,  and  are  forced  to  think  about  what 
we  are  doing.  There  is  nothing  very  interest- 
ing or  curious  about  this.  It  is  simply  a  rather 
unpleasant  fact.  What  is  interesting  is  that 
Chicago  seems  to  be  thinking  more  than  the 
rest  of  us,  is  at  all  events  more  interested  than 
the  rest  of  us  in  the  range  of  subjects  which 
I  have  very  roughly  called  eugenics.  Chicago 
is,  apparently,  buying  more  books  on  these 
subjects,  and  presumably  buys  them  in  order 
to  read  them.  Is  this  a  symptom  of  the  exist- 
ence of  a  latent  vein  of  weakness  in  Chicago? 

I  am  not  a  very  good  judge  of  a  question 

[143] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

of  this  sort.  The  whole  subject  of  Eugenics 
and  all  the  other  subjects  which  are  associated 
with  it  are  extremely  distasteful  to  me.  I  like 
to  think  of  young  men  and  young  women  fall- 
ing in  love  with  each  other  and  getting  mar- 
ried because  they  are  in  love  without  consider- 
ing overmuch  the  almost  inevitable  conse- 
quences until  these  are  forced  upon  them.  I 
fancy  that  in  an  entirely  healthy  community 
things  would  be  managed  in  this  way,  and  that 
the  result,  generally  speaking  and  taking  a 
wide  number  of  cases  into  consideration,  would 
be  a  race  of  wholesome,  sound  children,  fairly 
well  endowed  with  natural  powers  and  fitted 
to  meet  the  struggle  of  life.  But  Chicago 
evidently  thinks  otherwise.  The  subject  of 
Eugenics  is  studied  there,  and,  as  a  conse- 
quence of  the  study,  a  number  of  clergy  of 
various  churches  have  declared  that  they  will 
not  marry  people  who  are  suffering  from  cer- 
tain diseases.  They  have  all  reason  on  their 
side.  I  admit  it.  I  have  nothing  to  urge 
against  them  except  an  old-fashioned  preju- 
dice in  favor  of  the  fullest  possible  liberty  to 
[144] 


ADVANCE,    CHICAGO! 

the  individual.  Yet  I  cannot  help  feeling  that 
it  is  not  a  sign  of  strength  in  a  community  that 
it  should  think  very  much  about  these  things. 
A  man  seldom  worries  about  his  digestion  or 
reads  books  about  his  stomach  until  his  stom- 
ach and  his  digestion  have  gone  wrong  and 
begun  to  worry  him.  A  great  interest  in  what 
is  going  on  in  our  insides  is  either  a  sign  that 
things  are  not  going  on  properly  or  else  a 
deliberate  invitation  to  our  insides  to  give  us 
trouble.  It  is  the  same  with  the  community. 
But  I  should  not  like  to  think  that  anything 
either  is  or  soon  will  be  the  matter  with  Chi- 
cago. It  would  be  a  lamentable  loss  to  the 
world  if  Chicago's  definite  "I  will"  were  to 
weaken,  if  the  native  hue  of  this  magnificent, 
self-confident  resolution  were  to  be  sicklied 
o'er  with  a  pale  cast  of  thought. 

At  present,  at  all  events,  there  is  very  little 
sign  of  any  such  disaster.  It  happened  that 
while  we  were  in  Chicago  there  was  some  sort 
of  Congress  of  literary  men.  They  dined  to- 
gether, of  course,  as  all  civilized  men  do  when 
they  meet  to  take  counsel  together  on  any  sub- 

[145] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

ject  except  the  making  of  laws.  In  all  prob- 
ability laws  would  be  better  made  if  Parlia- 
ments were  dining  clubs;  but  this  is  too  wide 
a  subject  for  me  to  discuss.  The  literary  men 
who  met  in  Chicago  had  a  dinner,  and  I  was 
highly  honored  by  receiving  an  invitation  to 
it.  I  wish  it  had  been  possible  for  me  to  be 
there.  I  could  not  manage  it,  but  I  did  the 
next  best  thing,  I  read  the  report  of  the  pro- 
ceedings in  the  papers  on  the  following  morn- 
ing. One  speaker  said  thatihe  looked  forward 
to  the  day  when  Chicago  would  be  the  world 
center  of  literature,  music  and  art.  He  was 
not,  of  course,  a  stranger,  one  of  the  literary 
men  who  had  gathered  there  from  various  parts 
of  America.  He  was  a  citizen  of  Chicago. 
No  stranger  would  have  ventured  to  say  so 
magnificent  a  thing.  As  long  as  Chicago  says 
things  like  that,  simply  and  unaffectedly,  and 
believes  them,  Chicago  can  study  eugenics  as 
much  as  it  likes,  might  even  devote  itself  to 
Christian  Science  or  take  to  Spiritualism.  It 
would  still  remain  strong  and  sane.  For  this 
was  not  a  silly  boast,  made  in  the  name  of  a 
[146] 


ADVANCE,    CHICAGO! 

community  which  knows  nothing  of  literature, 
music  or  art.  Chicago  knows  perfectly  well 
what  literature  is  and  what  art  is.  Chicago 
understands  what  England  has  done  in  liter- 
ature and  art,  what  France  has  done,  what 
Germany  has  done.  Chicago  has  even  a  very 
good  idea  of  what  Athens  did.  If  I  were  to 
say  that  I  looked  forward  to  inventing  a  per- 
fect flying  machine  I  should  be  a  fool,  because 
I  know  nothing  whatever  about  flying  ma- 
chines and  have  not  the  dimmest  idea  of  what 
the  difficulties  of  making  them  are.  If  Chi- 
cago were  as  ignorant  about  literature  and  art 
as  I  am  about  aeronautics,  its  hope  of  becom- 
ing the  world  center  of  these  things  would  be 
fit  matter  for  a  comic  paper.  What  makes 
this  boast  so  impressive  is  just  the  fact  that 
Chicago  knows  quite  well  what  it  means. 

There  are  no  bounds  to  what  a  man  can  do 
except  his  own  self -distrust.  There  is  noth- 
ing beyond  the  reach  of  a  city  which  unfalter- 
ingly believes  in  itself.  No  other  city  believes 
in  itself  quite  so  whole-heartedly  as  Chicago 
does,  and  I  expect  Chicago  will  be  the  world 

[147] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

center  of  literature,  music  and  art.  There  is 
nothing  to  stop  it,  unless  indeed  Chicago  itself 
gives  up  the  idea  and  chooses  to  be  something 
else  instead.  It  may,  I  hope  it  will,  decide  to 
be  the  New  Jerusalem,  with  gates  of  pearl  and 
streets  of  gold  and  a  tree  of  life  growing  in  the 
midst  of  it.  Then  Chicago  will  be  the  New 
Jerusalem  and  I  shall  humbly  sue  to  be  ad- 
mitted as  a  citizen.  My  petition  will,  I  am 
sure,  be  granted,  for  the  hospitality  of  the 
people  of  Chicago  seems  to  me  to  exceed,  if 
that  be  possible,  the  hospitality  of  other  parts 
of  America.  I  am  not  sure  that  I  should  be 
altogether  happy  there,  even  under  the  new, 
perfected  conditions  of  life;  but  perhaps  I 
may.  I  was  indeed  born  in  Belfast,  and  as  a 
young  man  shared  its  spirit.  That  gives  me 
hope.  But  I  left  Belfast  early  in  life.  I  have 
dwelt  much  among  other  peoples,  and  learned 
self -distrust.  It  may  be  too  late  for  me  to  go 
back  to  my  youth  and  learn  confidence  again. 
If  it  is  too  late,  I  shall  not  be  really  happy  in 
Chicago. 

[148] 


CHAPTER   VII 

MEMPHIS    AND    THE    NEGRO 

Chicago  is  generous  as  well  as  strong. 
There  is  no  note  of  petty  jealousy  in  its  judg- 
ment of  other  cities.  Memphis  belongs  to  the 
South  and  is  very  diff erent  from  the  cities  of 
the  East  and  the  middle  West.  It  is  easily 
conceivable  that  Chicago  might  be  a  little  con- 
temptuous of  Memphis,  just  as  Belfast  is 
more  than  a  little  contemptuous  of  Dublin. 
But  Chicago  displays  a  fine  spirit.  I  was 
assured,  more  than  once,  when  I  was  in  Chi- 
cago, that  Memphis  is  a  good  business  city, 
and  I  suppose  that  no  higher  praise  could  be 
given  than  that.  I  never  met  a  Belfast  man 
who  would  say  as  much  for  Dublin.  But,  of 
course,  Chicago  is  not  in  this  matter  so  highly 
tried  as  Belfast  is.  Memphis  does  not  assume 
an  air  of  social  superiority  to  Chicago  as  Dub- 

[149] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

lin  does  to  Belfast.  It  is  not  therefore  so  very- 
hard  for  Chicago  to  be  generous  in  her  judg- 
ment. 

Perhaps  "generous"  is  the  wrong  word  to 
use;  "just"  would  be  better.  No  generosity 
is  required,  because  Memphis  really  is  one  of 
those  places  in  which  business  is  efficiently 
done.  Timber,  I  understand,  is  one  of  the 
things  in  which  Memphis  deals.  Cotton  is 
another.  I  do  not  know  which  of  the  two  is  a 
greater  source  of  trade,  but  cotton  is  the  more 
impressive  to  the  stranger.  The  place  is  full 
of  cotton.  Mule  carts  drag  great  bales  of  it 
to  and  from  railway  stations.  Sternwheel 
steamers  full  of  it  ply  up  and  down  the  Mis- 
sissippi. I  shall  never  again  take  out  a  pocket 
handkerchief — I  use  the  cheaper,  not  the  linen 
or  silken  handkerchief — without  looking  to  see 
if  there  is  a  little  piece  of  white  fluff  sticking 
on  my  sleeve.  When  I  next  visit  one  of  the 
vast  whirling  mills  of  Lancashire  I  shall  think 
of  a  large  quiet  room  in  Memphis  full  of  tables 
on  which  are  laid  little  bundles  of  cotton,  each 
bearing  a  neat  ticket  with  mysterious  numbers 
[150] 


MEMPHIS   AND    THE   NEGRO 

and  letters  written  on  it.  As  I  watch  the  op- 
eratives tending  the  huge  machines  which  spin 
their  endless  threads,  I  shall  think  of  the  men 
who  handle  the  samples  of  the  cotton  crop  in 
that  Memphis  office.  They  take  the  stuff  be- 
tween their  fingers  and  thumbs  and  slowly  pull 
it  apart,  looking  attentively  at  the  fine  fibers 
which  stretch  and  separate  as  the  gentle  pull  is 
completed.  By  some  exquisite  sensitiveness  of 
touch  and  some  subtle  skill  of  glance  they  can 
tell  to  within  an  eighth  of  an  inch  how  long 
these  fibers  are.  And  on  the  length  of  the  fiber 
depends  to  a  great  extent  the  value  of  the 
crop  of  the  particular  plantation  from  which 
that  sample  comes.  Outside  the  windows  of 
the  room  is  the  Mississippi, — a  broad,  sluggish, 
gray  river  when  I  saw  it;  where  the  deeply 
laden  steamers  splash  their  way  from  riverside 
plantations  to  Memphis  and  then  down  to  New 
Orleans,  where  much  of  the  cotton  is  shipped 
to  Europe. 

Beyond  the  room  where  the  cotton  is  graded 
is  an  office,  a  sunlit  pleasant  place  with  com- 
fortable writing  desks  and  a  case  full  of  vari- 

[151] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

ous  books.  You  might  fancy  yourself  in  the 
private  room  of  some  cultivated  lawyer  in  an 
English  country  town,  if  it  were  not  that  in  a 
corner  of  that  office  there  stands  one  of  those 
machines  which,  with  an  infinite  amount  of 
fussy  ticking,  disgorge  a  steady  stream  of  rib- 
bon stamped  with  figures.  In  New  York  and 
Liverpool  men  are  shouting  furiously  at  each 
other  across  the  floors  of  Cotton  Exchanges. 
Prices  are  made,  raised,  lowered  by  their 
shouts.  Transactions  involving  huge  sums  of 
money  are  settled  by  a  gesture  or  two  and  a 
shouted  number.  A  hand  thrust  forward, 
palm  outward,  sells  what  twenty  panting 
steamers  carry  to  the  Memphis  quays.  A  nod 
and  a  swiftly  penciled  note  buys  on  the  assur- 
ance that  the  men  with  the  sensitive  fingers 
have  rightly  judged  the  exact  length  of  a  fiber, 
impalpable  to  most  of  us.  All  the  time  the 
shouting  and  the  gestures  are  going  on  thou- 
sands of  miles  away  this  machine,  with  de- 
tached and  unexcited  indifference,  is  stamping 
a  record  of  the  frenzied  bidding,  there  in  the 
sunlit  Memphis  office.  Chicago  is  no  more 
[152] 


MEMPHIS   AND    THE   NEGRO 

than  just  when  it  says  that  Memphis  is  a  city 
where  business  is  done. 

Modern  business  seems  to  me  the  most  won- 
derful and  romantic  thing  that  the  world  has 
ever  seen.  A  doctor  in  London  takes  a  knife 
and  cuts  a  bit  out  of  a  man's  side.  By  doing 
that  he  acquires,  if  he  chooses  to  exercise  it, 
the  right  to  levy  a  perpetual  tax  on  the  earn- 
ings of  a  railway  somewhere  in  the  Argentine 
Republic.  No  traveler  on  that  railway  knows 
of  his  existence.  None  of  the  engine  drivers, 
porters,  guards  or  clerks  who  work  the  railway 
have  ever  heard  of  that  doctor  or  of  the  man 
whose  side  was  cut.  But  of  the  fruit  of  their 
labors  some  portion  will  go  to  that  doctor  and 
to  his  children  after  him  if  he  chooses,  with 
the  money  his  victim  pays  him,  to  buy  part  of 
the  stock  of  that  railway  company.  An  ob- 
scure writer,  living  perhaps  in  some  remote  cor- 
ner of  Wales,  tells  a  story  which  catches  the 
fancy  of  the  ladies  who  subscribe  to  Mudie's 
library.  He  is  able,  because  he  has  written 
feelingly  of  Evangelina's  first  kiss,  to  take  to 
himself  and  assure  to  his  heirs  some  part  of  the 

[153] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

steel  which  sweating  toilers  make  in  Pitts- 
burgh, or,  if  that  please  him  better,  he  can 
levy  a  toll  upon  the  gold  dug  from  a  mine  in 
South  Africa.  What  do  the  Pittsburgh  steel 
workers  know  or  care  about  him  or  Evangelina 
or  the  ladies  who  thrill  over  her  caress?  Why- 
should  they  give  up  part  of  the  fruit  of  their 
toil  because  an  imaginary  man  is  said  to  have 
kissed  a  girl  who  never  existed?  It  is  very 
difficult  to  explain  it,  but  all  society,  all  na- 
tions, peoples  and  languages  agree  that  they 
must.  The  whole  force  of  humanity,  combined 
for  this  purpose  only,  agrees  that  the  doctor, 
because  of  his  knife,  which  has  very  likely 
killed  its  victim,  and  the  novelist  because  of  his 
silly  simpering  heroine,  shall  have  an  indefeas- 
ible right  to  tax  for  their  own  private  benefit 
almost  any  industry  in  the  whole  wide  world. 
This  is  an  unimaginable  romance.  So  is  all 
business;  but  Memphis  brought  home  the 
strangeness  of  it  to  me  most  compellingly. 

Here  is  a  dainty  lady,  furclad,  scented,  pac- 
ing with  delicate  steps  across  the  floor  of  one 
of  our  huge  shops.    In  front  of  her,  not  less 
[154] 


MEMPHIS    AND    THE    NEGRO 

exquisitely  dressed,  a  handsome  man  bows  low 
with  the  courtesy  of  a  great  lord  of  other  days : 

"Lingerie,  madam,  this  way  if  you  please. 
The  second  turning  to  the  left.  This  way, 
madam.  Miss  Jones,  if  you  please.  Madam 
wishes  to  see " 

And  madam,  with  her  insolent  eyes,  deigns 
to  survey  some  frothy  piles  of  frilly  garments, 
touches,  appraises  the  material,  peers  at  the 
stitches  of  the  hems,  plucks  at  inserted  strips  of 
lace. 

Here  are  broad  acres  of  black,  caked  earth 
and  all  across  them  are  rows  and  rows  of 
stunted  bushes,  like  gooseberry  bushes,  but 
thinner  and  much  darker.  On  all  their  prickly 
branches  hang  little  tufts  of  white  fluff — cot- 
ton. Among  the  bushes  go  men,  women  and 
children,  black,  negroes  every  one  of  them, 
dressed  in  bright  yellow,  bright  blue  and  flam- 
ing red.  From  their  shoulders  hang  long  sacks 
which  trail  on  the  ground  behind  them.  They 
steadily  pick,  pick,  pick  the  fluffs  of  cotton 
out  of  the  opened  pods,  and  push  each  little  bit 
into  a  sack.    There  you  have  the  beginning  of 

[155] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

all,  the  ending  of  part  of  this  wonderful  sub- 
stance which  clothes,  so  they  tell  us,  nine- 
tenths  of  the  men  and  women  in  the  world  who 
wear  clothes.  What  is  in  between  the  dainty 
English  lady  and  the  negro  in  Tennessee? 

The  plantation  owner  drives  his  mule  along 
winding  tracks  through  the  fields  where  the 
bushes  are  and  watches.  He  is  a  man  harassed 
by  the  unsolvable  negro  problem,  in  constant 
dread  of  insect  pests,  oppressed  by  economic 
difficulties.  Men  in  mills  nearby  comb  the 
thick  seeds  from  the  raw  cotton,  press  it  tight 
and  bind  it  into  huge  bales.  Men  grade  and  sort 
the  samples  of  it.  Men  shout  at  each  other  in 
great  marts,  buy  and  sell  cotton  yet  unsorted, 
unpicked,  ungrown;  and  the  record  of  their 
doings  is  flashed  across  continents  and  oceans. 
Ships  laden  down  to  the  limit  of  safety  plunge 
through  great  seas  with  tired  men  on  their 
bridges  guiding  them.  In  Lancashire,  in 
Russia,  in  Austria,  huge  factories  set  their  en- 
gines working  and  their  wheels  go  whirling 
round.  Men  and  women  sweat  at  the  ma- 
chines. In  Derry  and  a  thousand  other  places 
[156] 


MEMPHIS   AND    THE   NEGRO 

women  in  gaunt  bare  rooms  with  sewing  ma- 
chines, or  in  quiet  chambers  of  French  con- 
vents with  needles  in  their  hands,  are  working 
at  long  strips  of  cotton  fabric.  In  shops 
women  again,  officered  by  men,  are  selling 
countless  different  stuffs  made  out  of  this 
same  cotton  fluff. 

And  the  whole  complex  organization,  the 
last  achieved  result  of  man's  age-long  struggle 
for  civilization,  works  on  the  perilous  verge  of 
breaking  down.  The  fine  lady  at  the  one  end 
of  it  may  buy  what  she  cannot  pay  for  and 
disturb  the  delicately  balanced  calculations  of 
the  shopkeeper.  Some  well-intentioned  Gov- 
ernment somewhere  may  insist  that  the  women 
who  sew  shall  have  fire  and  a  share  of  the  sun- 
light, things  which  cost  money.  Inspectors 
come,  with  pains  and  penalties  ready  in  their 
pockets,  and  it  seems  possible  that  they  will  dis- 
locate the  whole  machine.  Labor,  painfully 
organized,  suddenly  claims  a  larger  share  of 
the  profits  which  are  flowing  in.  The  wheels 
of  all  the  factories  stop  whirling.  Their  stop- 
ping  affects   every   one   through   the   whole 

[157] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

length  of  the  tremendous  chain,  alters  the  man- 
ner of  life  in  the  tiniest  of  the  negroes'  huts. 
A  sanguine  broker  may  speculate  disastrously 
and  the  long  chain  of  the  organization  quivers 
through  its  entire  length  and  threatens  break- 
ing. A  ship  owner  raises  rates,  the  servants  of 
a  railway  company  go  on  strike.  Some  one 
makes  a  blunder  in  estimating  the  size  of  a 
future  crop.  Negroes  prove  less  satisfactory 
than  usual  as  workers.  The  possibilities  of  a 
breakdown  somewhere  are  almost  uncountable. 
Yet  somehow  the  thing  works.  It  is  a  won- 
derful accomplishment  of  man  that  it  should 
work  and  break  down  as  seldom  as  it  does ;  but 
the  dread  of  breakdown  is  present  everywhere. 
Everyone,  the  whole  way  from  the  lady  who 
wants  lingerie  to  the  negro  who  picks  at  the 
bushes,  is  beset  with  anxiety.  But  fortunately 
no  one  ever  really  feels  more  than  his  own  im- 
mediate share  of  it.  The  cotton  planter  will 
indeed  be  affected  seriously  by  an  epidemic  of 
speculation  in  New  York,  or  a  strike  in  Lanca- 
shire or  the  legislation  of  some  well-meaning 
government.  He  knows  all  this,  but  it  does 
[158] 


MEMPHIS    AND    THE    NEGRO 

not  actually  trouble  him  much.  He  has  his 
own  particular  worry  and  it  is  at  him  so  con- 
stantly that  it  leaves  all  the  other  worries  no 
time  to  get  at  him  at  all.  His  worry  is  the 
negro. 

According  to  the  theory  of  the  American 
constitution  the  negro  is  a  free  man,  a  brother, 
as  responsible  as  anyone  else  for  the  due  order- 
ing of  the  state.  In  actual  practice  the  negro 
is  either  slowly  emerging  from  the  slave  status 
or  slowly  sinking  back  to  it  again.  It  does  not 
matter  which  way  you  look  at  it,  the  essential 
thing  is,  whichever  way  he  is  going,  he  is  not 
yet  settled  down  in  either  position.  It  is  im- 
possible— on  account  of  the  law — to  treat  him 
as  a  slave.  It  is  impossible— on  account  of  his 
nature,  so  I  am  told — to  treat  him  as  a  free 
man.  He  is  somewhere  in  between  the  two. 
He  is  economically  difficult  and  socially  un- 
desirable. But  he  is  the  only  means  yet  dis- 
covered of  getting  cotton  picked.  If  anyone 
would  invent  a  machine  for  picking  cotton  he 
would  benefit  the  world  at  large  immensely  and 
make  the  cotton  planter,  save  for  the  fear  of 

[159] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

certain  insects,  a  happy  man.  But  the  shape  of 
the  cotton  bush  renders  it  very  difficult  to  get 
the  cotton  off  it  except  by  the  use  of  the  human 
finger  and  thumb.  We  are  not  nearly  so  clever 
at  inventing  things  as  we  think  we  are.  The 
cotton  bush  has  so  far  defeated  us.  The  ne- 
gro, who  supplies  the  finger  and  thumb,  has 
very  nearly  defeated  us  too.  It  is  hard  to  get 
him  to  work  at  all  and  still  harder  to  keep  him 
at  it.  He  does  not  seem  to  be  responsive  to 
the  ordinary  rules  of  political  economy.  If  he 
can  earn  enough  in  one  day  to  keep  him  for 
three  days  he  sees  no  sense  in  working  during 
the  other  two. 

The  southern  American  does  not  seem  to  be 
trying  to  solve  this  negro  problem.  He  makes 
all  sorts  of  makeshift  arrangements,  tries 
plans  which  may  work  this  year  and  next  year 
but  which  plainly  will  not  work  for  very  many 
years.  These  seem  the  best  he  can  do.  Per- 
haps they  are  the  best  anyone  could  do.  Per- 
haps it  is  always  wisest  to  be  content  to  keep 
things  going  and  to  let  the  remoter  future  take 
care  of  itself.  The  cotton  crop  has  to  be 
[160] 


MEMPHIS    AND    THE    NEGRO 

picked  somehow  this  year,  and  it  may  have  to 
be  picked  next  year  too.  After  that — well 
nobody  speculates  in  futures  as  far  ahead  as 
1916. 

The  problem  of  the  social  position  of  the 
negro  seems  to  be  quite  as  difficult  to  solve 
as  that  created  by  his  indifference  to  the  laws 
of  political  economy.  The  "man  and  brother" 
theory  has  broken  down  hopelessly  and  the 
line  drawn  between  the  white  and  colored  parts 
of  the  population  in  the  South  is  as  well  de- 
fined and  distinct  as  any  line  can  be.  The 
stranger  is  told  horrible  tales  of  negro  doings 
and  is  convinced  that  the  white  men  believe 
them  by  the  precautions  they  take  for  the  pro- 
tection of  women.  There  may  be  a  good  deal 
of  exaggeration  about  these  stories,  and  in  any 
case  the  moraljty  or  immorality  of  the  negro 
is  not  the  most  difficult  element  in  the  problem. 
Education,  the  steady  enforcement  of  law,  and 
the  gradual  pressure  of  civilization  will  no 
doubt  in  time  render  outrages  rarer.  It  is  at 
all  events  possible  to  look  forward  hopefully. 
The  real  difficulty  seems  to  me  to  lie  in  the 

[161] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

strong",  contemptuous  dislike  which  white  peo- 
ple who  are  brought  into  close  contact  with  ne- 
groes almost  invariably  seem  to  feel  for  them. 
In  the  northern  parts  of  America  where  ne- 
groes form  a  very  small  part  of  the  population, 
this  feeling  does  not  exist.  A  northern  Amer- 
ican or  an  Englishman  would  not  feel  that  he 
were  insulted  if  he  were  asked  to  sit  next  a 
negro  at  a  public  banquet.  A  southern  Amer- 
ican would  decline  an  invitation  if  he  thought  it 
likely  that  he  would  be  called  upon  to  do  such  a 
thing.  A  southern  lady,  who  happened  to  be 
in  New  York,  was  offered  by  a  polite  stranger 
a  seat  in  a  street  car  next  a  negro.  She  indig- 
nantly refused  to  occupy  it.  The  very  offer 
was  an  outrage. 

The  feeling  would  be  intelligible  if  it  were 
the  outcome  of  instinctive  physical  prejudice. 
An  Englishwoman,  who  had  hardly  ever  come 
into  contact  with  a  negro,  once  found  herself 
seated  at  tea  in  the  saloon  of  a  steamer  opposite 
a  negress  who  was  in  charge  of  some  white 
children.  She  found  it  impossible  to  help  her- 
self to  cake  from  the  dish  from  which  the  ne- 
[162] 


MEMPHIS   AND    THE    NEGRO 

gress  had  helped  herself.  The  idea  of  doing 
so  filled  her  with  a  sense  of  sickness.  Yet  she 
did  not  feel  herself  insulted  or  outraged  at 
being  placed  where  she  was.  A  southern  Amer- 
ican woman  would  have  felt  outraged.  But 
the  southern  American  woman  has  no  instinc- 
tive shrinking  from  physical  contact  with  black 
people.  She  is  accustomed  to  it.  She  has  at 
home  a  black  cook  who  handles  the  food  of  the 
household,  a  black  nurse  who  minds  the  chil- 
dren, perhaps  a  black  maid  who  performs  for 
her  all  sorts  of  intimate  acts  of  service.  As 
servants  she  has  no  objection  to  negroes. 
There  is  in  her  nothing  corresponding  to  the 
Englishwoman's  instinctive  shrinking  from  the 
touch  of  a  black  hand. 

Nor  is  the  southern  American's  contempt 
for  the  negroes  anything  at  all  analogous  to 
the  contempt  which  most  people  feel  for  those 
who  are  plainly  their  inferiors.  A  brave  man 
has  a  thoroughly  intelligible  contempt  for  one 
who  has  shown  himself  to  be  a  coward.  But 
this  is  an  entirely  different  thing,  different  in 
kind,  not  merely  in  degree,  from  a  southern 

[163] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

white  man's  contempt  for  a  negro.  It  is  the  ex- 
istence of  this  feeling,  intensely  strong  and 
very  difficult  to  explain,  which  makes  the  prob- 
lem of  the  negro's  social  future  seem  hopeless 
of  solution.  No  moral  or  intellectual  advance 
which  the  negro  can  make  aif ects  this  feeling 
in  the  slightest.  It  is  not  the  brutalized  negro 
or  the  ignorant  negro,  but  the  negro,  whom  the 
white  man  refuses  to  recognize  as  a  possible 
equal. 

Memphis,  in  spite  of  its  negro  problem, 
seems  to  me  to  be  rapidly  emerging  from  the 
ruins  of  one  civilization  and  to  be  pressing  for- 
ward to  take  a  foremost  place  in  another.  I 
do  not  suppose  that  Memphis  now  regrets  the 
past  very  much  or  even  thinks  often  of  the 
terrible  humiliation  of  the  Civil  War  and  the 
years  of  blank  hopeless  ruin  which  followed  it. 
There  was  that  indeed  in  the  past  which  must 
have  left  indelible  marks  behind  it.  It  was  not 
easy  for  a  proud  people,  essentially  aristo- 
cratic in  their  outlook  upon  life,  to  accept  de- 
feat at  the  hands  of  men  whom  they  looked 
down  upon.  It  is  not  easy  to  forget  the  in- 
[164] 


MEMPHIS   AND   THE   NEGRO 

tolerable  injustice  which,  inevitably,  I  suppose, 
followed  the  defeat.  But  Memphis  is  looking 
forward  and  not  back,  is  grasping  at  the  pos- 
sibilities of  the  future  rather  than  brooding 
over  the  past. 

But  if  Memphis  and  the  South  generally 
are  content  to  forget  the  past,  it  does  not  fol- 
low that  the  past  has  forgotten  them.  The 
spirit  of  the  older  civilization  abides.  It  haunts 
the  new  life  like  some  pathetic  ghost,  doomed 
to  wander  helplessly  among  people  who  no 
longer  want  to  see  it.  There  is  a  certain  suav- 
ity about  Memphis  which  the  stranger  feels 
directly  he  touches  the  life  of  the  place.  It  is 
a  lingering  perfume,  delicate,  faint  but  ap- 
preciable. I  am  told  that  it  is  to  be  traced  to 
Europe,  that  the  business  men  in  Memphis 
have  closer  relations  with  England,  Austria 
and  Russia  than  with  the  northern  states  of 
their  own  country.  I  am  also  told  that  we 
must  look  to  the  origin  of  it  to  the  Cavalier 
settlers  of  the  southern  states  from  whom  the 
people  who  live  there  now  claim  descent.  I 
do  not  like  either  explanation.    A  man  does 

[165] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

not  catch  suavity  by  doing  business  with  Lan- 
cashire. The  quality  is  not  one  on  which  the 
northern  Englishman  prides  himself,  or  indeed 
which  is  very  obvious  in  his  way  of  living.  The 
blood  of  those  original  cavaliers,  gentlemen  all 
of  them  I  am  sure,  must  have  got  a  good  deal 
mixed  in  the  course  of  the  last  two  hundred 
years,  especially  as  strangers  are  always  pour- 
ing into  the  South.  It  must  be  an  attenuated 
fluid  now,  scarcely  capable  of  flavoring  per- 
ceptibly a  new  and  vigorous  life.  I  prefer  my 
own  hypothesis  of  a  ghost.  Some  of  these 
creatures  smell  of  sulphur  and  leave  a  reek  of  it 
behind  them  when  they  pay  visits  to  their  old 
homes  on  earth.  Others  betray  their  presence 
by  the  damp,  cold  earthy  air  they  bring  with 
them  from  the  tombs  in  which  their  bodies  were 
laid.  This  Memphis  ghost,  which  no  one  in 
Memphis  sees,  but  which  yet  has  its  influence 
on  Memphis  life,  is  of  quite  a  different  kind. 
It  is  scented  with  pot-pourri,  and  the  delicate 
rose  water  which  great  ladies  of  bygone  gen- 
erations made  and  used.  It  is  the  ghost  of 
some  grande  dame  like  Madame  Esmond,  who 
[166] 


MEMPHIS   AND    THE    NEGRO 

owned  slaves  and  used  them  with  no  misgiving 
about  her  right  to  do  so,  whose  pride  was  very- 
great,  whose  manners  were  dignified,  whose 
ways  among  those  of  her  own  caste  were  ex- 
ceedingly gracious.  There  is  something,  some 
lingering  suggestion  of  great  ladies  about 
Memphis  still,  in  spite  of  its  new  commercial 
prosperity.  I  think  it  must  be  because  the 
spirits  of  them  haunt  the  place. 

Someone  must  surely  have  written  a  book 
on  the  philosophy  of  American  place  names. 
The  subject  is  an  interesting  one,  and  the  world 
has  a  lot  of  authors  in  it.  It  cannot  have  es- 
caped them  all.  But  I  have  not  seen  the  book. 
If  I  ever  do  see  it  I  shall  turn  straight  to  the 
chapter  which  deals  with  Memphis  and  Cairo, 
for  I  very  much  want  to  know  how  those  two 
places  came  to  have  Egypt  for  their  god- 
father. Most  American  place  names  are  easy 
enough  to  understand,  and  they  seem  to  me  to 
surpass,  in  their  fascinating  suggestion  of  ro- 
mance, our  older  Irish  and  English  names.  It 
is,  of  course,  interesting  to  know  that  all  the 
chesters  in  England — Colchester,  Dorchester, 

[167] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

Manchester  and  Chester  itself — were  once  Ro- 
man camps;  and  that  most  of  the  Irish  kils — 
Kilkenny,  Kildare,  Killaloe,  Kilrush — were 
the  churches  of  once  honored  saints*  But  the 
Romans  and  the  saints  are  very  remote.  They 
were  important  people  in  their  day  no  doubt, 
but  it  is  very  hard  to  feel  the  personal  touch 
of  them  now.  American  place  names  bring  us 
closer  to  men  with  whom  we  feel  that  we  can 
sympathize.  There  is  a  whole  range  of  names 
taken  straight  from  old  homes,  New  York, 
for  instance,  Boston,  New  Orleans.  We  do 
not  need  to  go  back  in  search  of  emotions  to 
the  original  meaning  of  York  or  to  worry 
over  the  derivation  of  Orleans.  It  is  enough 
for  us  that  these  names  suggest  all  the  pathetic 
nostalgia  of  exiles.  The  men  who  named  these 
places  must  have  been  thinking  of  dearly  loved 
cathedral  towers,  of  the  streets  and  market 
places  of  country  towns  whose  every  detail  was 
well  remembered  and  much  regretted,  of  homes 
which  they  would  scarcely  hope  to  see  again. 
It  is  not  hard,  either,  to  catch  the  spirit  of  the 
Puritan  settlers  in  theological  and  biblical 
[168] 


MEMPHIS   AND    THE    NEGRO 

names,  in  Philadelphia,  Salem  and  so  forth. 
The  men  who  gave  these  names  to  their  new 
homes  must  have  felt  that  like  Abraham  they 
had  gone  forth  from  their  kindred  and  their 
people,  from  the  familiar  Ur  of  the  Chaldees, 
to  seek  a  country,  to  find  that  better  city  whose 
builder  and  maker  is  God.  Philadelphia  is 
perhaps  to-day  no  more  remarkable  for  the 
prevalence  of  brotherly  love  among  its  people 
than  any  other  city  is.  But  there  were  great 
thoughts  in  the  minds  of  the  men  who  named 
it  first;  and  reading  the  name  to-day,  even  in 
a  railway  guide,  our  hearts  are  lifted  up  into 
some  sort  of  communion  with  theirs.  Then 
there  are  the  Indian  names,  of  lakes,  moun- 
tains and  rivers  chiefly,  but  occasionally  of 
cities  too.  Chicago  is  a  city  with  an  Indian 
name.  Perhaps  these  are  of  all  the  most  sug- 
gestive of  romance.  It  must  have  been  the 
hunters  and  explorers,  pioneers  of  the  pioneers, 
who  fixed  these  names.  One  imagines  these 
men,  hardened  with  intolerable  toil,  skilled  in 
all  the  lore  of  wild  life,  brave,  adventurous, 
picking  up  here  and  there  a  word  or  two  of 

[169] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

Indian  speech,  adopting  Indian  names  for 
places  which  they  had  no  time  to  name  them- 
selves, handing  on  these  strange  syllables  to 
those  who  came  after  them  to  settle  and  to 
build.  Greater,  so  it  seems,  than  the  romance 
of  the  homesick  exile,  greater  than  the  ro- 
mance of  the  Puritan  with  his  Bible  in  his 
hand,  is  the  wild  adventurousness  which  comes 
blown  to  us  across  the  years  in  these  Indian 
names. 

But  there  are  names  like  Memphis  which 
entirely  baffle  the  imagination.  It  is  almost 
impossible  to  think  that  the  people  who  named 
that  place  were  homesick  for  Egypt.  What 
would  Copts  be  doing  on  the  shores  of  the 
Mississippi?  How  could  they  have  got  there? 
Nor  is  it  easy  to  think  of  any  emotion  which 
the  name  Memphis  would  be  likely  to  stir  in 
the  mind  of  a  settler.  Memphis  means  noth- 
ing to  most  men.  It  is  easy  to  see  why  there 
should  be  an  American  Rome.  A  man  might 
never  have  been  in  Rome,  might  have  no  more 
than  the  barest  smattering  of  its  history,  yet 
the  name  would  suggest  to  him  thoughts  of 
[170] 


MEMPHIS   AND    THE    NEGRO 

imperial  greatness.  Any  one  who  admires  im- 
perial greatness  would  be  inclined  to  call  a  new 
city  Rome.  But  Memphis  suggests  nothing 
to  most  of  us,  and  to  the  few  is  associated 
only  with  the  worship  of  some  long  forsaken 
gods.  I  can  understand  Indianapolis.  There 
was  Indiana  to  start  with,  a  name  which  any- 
one with  a  taste  for  sonorous  vowel  sounds 
might  easily  make  out  of  Indian.  The  Greek 
termination  is  natural  enough.  It  gives  a  very 
desirable  suggestion  of  classical  culture  to  a 
scholar.  But  a  scholar  would  be  driven  far 
afield  indeed  before  he  searched  out  Memphis 
for  a  name. 

I  asked  several  learned  and  thoughtful  peo- 
ple how  Memphis  came  by  its  name.  I  got  no 
answer  which  was  really  satisfactory.  It  was 
suggested  to  me  that  cotton  grows  in  Egypt 
and  also  in  the  neighborhood  of  Memphis. 
But  cotton  does  not  immediately  suggest 
Egypt  to  the  mind.  Mummies  suggest  Egypt. 
So,  though  less  directly,  does  corn.  If  a  cache 
of  mummies  had  been  discovered  on  the  banks 
of  the  Mississippi  it  would  be  easy  to  account 

[171] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

for  Memphis.  If  Tennessee  were  a  great 
wheat  state  one  could  imagine  settlers  saying 
"There  is  corn  in  Egypt,  according  to  the 
Scriptures.  Let  us  call  our  new  city  by  an 
Egyptian  name."  But  I  doubt  whether  cot- 
ton suggested  Memphis.  It  certainly  did  not 
suggest  Cairo,  for  Cairo  is  not  a  cotton  place. 
I  was  told, — though  without  any  strong  con- 
viction— that  the  sight  of  the  Mississippi  re- 
minded somebody  once  of  the  Nile.  It  would 
of  course  remind  an  Egyptian  fellah  of  the 
Nile;  but  the  original  settlers  in  Memphis 
were  almost  certainly  not  Egyptian  fellaheen. 
Why  should  it  remind  any  one  else  of  the  Nile? 
It  reminds  me  of  the  Shannon,  and  I  should 
probably  have  wanted  to  call  Memphis  Ath- 
lone  if  I  had  had  a  voice  in  the  naming  of  it. 
It  would  remind  an  Englishman  of  the  Severn, 
a  German  of  the  Rhine,  an  Austrian  of  the 
Danube,  a  Spaniard — it  was,  I  think,  a  Span- 
iard who  went  there  first — of  the  Guadal- 
quiver.  I  cannot  believe  that  the  sight  of  a 
very  great  river  naturally  suggests  the  Nile  to 
[172] 


MEMPHIS   AND    THE   NEGRO 

anyone  who  is  not  familiar  with  Egypt  before- 
hand. 

It  is  indeed  true  that  both  the  Mississippi 
and  the  Nile  have  a  way  of  overflowing  their 
banks,  but  most  large  rivers  do  that  from  time 
to  time.  The  habit  is  not  so  peculiar  as  to 
force  the  thought  of  the  Nile  on  early  observ- 
ers of  the  Mississippi.  Indeed  there  is  a  great 
difference  between  the  overflowings  of  the  Nile 
and  those  of  the  Mississippi.  The  Nile,  so  I 
have  always  understood,  fertilizes  the  land 
round  it  when  it  overflows.  The  Mississippi 
destroys  cotton  crops  when  it  breaks  loose. 
South  of  Memphis  for  very  many  miles  the 
river  is  contained  by  large  dykes,  called  levees, 
a  word  of  French  origin.  These  are  built  up 
far  above  the  level  of  the  land  which  they  pro- 
tect. It  is  a  very  strange  thing  to  stand  on  one 
of  these  dykes  and  look  down  on  one  side  at 
the  roofs  of  the  houses  of  the  village,  and  on 
the  other  side  at  the  river.  When  we  were 
there  the  river  was  very  low.  Long  banks  of 
sand  pushed  their  backs  up  everywhere  in  the 
main  stream  and  there  was  half  a  mile  of  dry 

[173] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

land  between  the  river  and  the  bank  on  which 
we  stood.  But  at  flood  time  the  river  comes 
right  up  to  the  dyke,  rises  along  the  slope  of 
it,  and  the  level  of  the  water  is  far  above  that 
of  the  land  which  the  dykes  protect.  Then 
the  people  in  the  villages  near  the  dyke  live  in 
constant  fear  of  inundation,  and  I  saw,  be- 
side a  house  far  inland,  a  boat  moored — should 
I  in  such  a  case  say  tethered? — to  a  tree  in  a 
garden  ready  for  use  if  the  river  swept  away 
a  dyke.  I  suppose  the  people  get  accustomed 
to  living  under  such  conditions.  Men  culti- 
vate vines  and  make  excellent  wine  on  the 
slopes  of  Vesuvius  though  Pompeii  lies,  a 
bleached  skeleton,  at  their  feet.  I  should  my- 
self rather  plant  cotton  behind  a  dyke,  than 
do  that.  But  I  am  not  nearly  so  much  afraid 
of  water  as  I  am  of  fire. 

I  was  told  that  at  flood  time  men  patrol  the 
tops  of  the  dykes  with  loaded  rifles  in  their 
hands,  ready  to  shoot  at  sight  anyone  who  at- 
tempts to  land  from  a  boat.  The  idea  is  that 
unscrupulous  people  on  the  left  bank,  seeing 
that  their  own  dyke  is  in  danger  of  collapsing, 
[174]   , 


MEMPHIS   AND    THE   NEGRO 

might  try  to  relieve  the  pressure  on  it  by  dig- 
ging down  a  dyke  on  the  right  bank  and  in- 
undating the  country  behind  it.  The  people 
on  the  other  side  of  course  take  similar  precau- 
tions. Most  men,  such  unfortunately  is  human 
nature,  would  undoubtedly  prefer  to  see  their 
neighbors'  houses  and  fields  flooded  rather 
than  their  own.  But  I  find  it  difficult  to  be- 
lieve that  anyone  would  be  so  entirely  un- 
scrupulous as  to  dig  down  a  protecting  dyke. 
The  rifle  men  can  scarcely  be  really  necessary 
but  their  existence  witnesses  to  the  greatness  of 
the  peril. 

I  saw,  while  I  was  in  Memphis,  a  place  where 
the  river  had  torn  a  large  piece  of  land  out 
of  the  side  of  a  public  park.  The  park  stood 
high  above  the  river  and  I  looked  down  over 
the  edge  of  a  moderately  lofty  cliff  at  the 
marks  of  the  river's  violence.  Some  unex- 
pected obstacle  or  some  unforeseen  alteration 
in  the  river  bed  had  sent  the  mighty  current 
in  full  force  against  the  land  in  this  particular 
place.  The  result  was  the  disappearance  of  a 
tract  of  ground  and  a  semicircle  of  clay  cliff 

[175] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

which  looked  as  if  it  had  been  made  with  a 
gigantic  cheese  scoop.  The  river  was  placid 
enough  when  I  saw  it,  a  broad  but  lazy  stream. 
But  for  the  torn  edge  of  the  park  I  should  have 
failed  to  realize  how  terrific  its  force  can  be. 
The  dykes  were  convincing.  So  were  the 
stories  of  the  riflemen.  But  the  other  brought 
the  reality  home  to  me  almost  as  well  as  if  I 
had  actually  seen  a  flood. 


[176] 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE    LAND     OF     THE    FREE 

We  should  have  been  hard  indeed  to  please 
if  we  had  not  enjoyed  our  visits  to  Chicago  and 
Memphis.  We  should  be  ungrateful  now  if 
we  confessed  that  there  was  any  note  of  dis- 
appointment in  the  memory  of  the  joyous  time 
we  had.  Yet  there  is  one  thing  we  regret  about 
that  journey  of  ours  to  the  Middle  West  and 
South.  We  should  dearly  have  liked  to  see  a 
dozen  other  places,  smaller  and  less  important, 
which  lay  along  the  railway  line  between  Chi- 
cago and  Memphis,  and  between  Memphis  and 
Indianapolis.  We  made  the  former  of  these 
journeys  entirely,  and  the  latter  partly,  by  day. 
Some  unimaginative  friends  warned  us  be- 
forehand that  these  journeys  were  dull,  that 
it  would  be  better  to  sleep  through  them  if  pos- 
sible, rather  than  spend  hours  looking  out  of 

[177] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

railway  carriage  windows  at  uninteresting 
landscapes.  These  friends  were  entirely  wrong. 
The  journeys  were  anything  but  dull.  The 
trains  dragged  us  through  a  whole  series  of 
small  towns,  and,  after  the  manner  of  many 
American  trains,  gave  us  ample  opportunity 
of  looking  at  the  houses  and  the  streets. 

In  other  countries  trains  are  obliged  to  hide 
themselves  as  much  as  possible  when  they  come 
to  towns.  They  go  into  tunnels  when  they 
can  or  wander  round  the  backs  of  mean  houses 
so  that  the  traveler  sees  nothing  except  patches 
of  half  bald  earth  sown  with  discarded  tins 
and  rows  of  shirts  and  stockings  hanging  out 
to  dry.  European  peoples,  it  appears,  do  not 
welcome  trains.  In  America  the  train  seems  to 
be  an  honored  guest.  It  is  allowed,  perhaps  in- 
vited, to  wander  along  or  across  the  chief 
streets.  I  have  been  told  by  a  very  angry 
critic  that  this  way  of  stating  the  fact  is  wrong, 
misleading,  and  abominably  unjust  to  the 
American  people.  The  towns,  he  says,  did  not 
invite  the  train,  but  the  train,  being  there  first, 
so  to  speak,  invited  the  towns  to  exist.  Very 
[178] 


THE    LAND    OF    THE    FREE 

likely  this  is  so.  But  it  seems  to  me  to  matter 
but  little  whether  the  train  or  the  town  came 
first.  The  noticeable  thing  is  that  the  town 
evidently  likes  the  train.  It  is  just  as  sure  a 
mark  of  affection  to  lay  out  a  main  street 
alongside  the  railway  line  as  it  would  be  to 
invite  the  railway  to  run  its  line  down  the  mid- 
dle of  the  main  street.  An  English  town,  if  it 
found  that  a  railway  was  established  on  its 
site  before  it  got  there  would  angrily  turn  its 
back  to  the  line,  would,  even  at  the  cost  of 
great  inconvenience,  run  its  streets  away  from 
the  railway.  The  American  plan  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  passenger  is  far  better. 
He  gets  the  most  delightful  glances  of  human 
activity  and  is  set  wondering  at  ways  of  life 
that  are  strange  to  him. 

Our  imagination  would,  I  think,  have  in  any 
case  been  equal  to  the  task  of  conjuring  up 
mental  pictures  of  what  life  is  like  in  these 
small  isolated  inland  towns.  We  should,  no 
doubt,  have  gone  grievously  wrong,  but  we 
should  have  enjoyed  ourselves  even  without 
guidance.     Fortunately  we  were  not  left  to 

[179] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

our  own  imaginative  blunderings.  We  had 
with  us  a  volume  of  Mr.  Irvin  Cobb's  stories 
for  the  possession  of  which  we  selfishly  dis- 
puted. It  gave  us  just  what  we  wanted,  a  sure 
groundwork  for  our  imaginings.  We  peopled 
those  little  towns  with  the  men  and  women 
whom  Mr.  Cobb  revealed  to  us.  His  humor 
and  his  delightful  tenderness  gave  us  real 
glimpses  of  the  lives,  the  hopes,  the  fears,  the 
prejudices  and  memories  of  many  people  who 
otherwise  would  have  been  quite  strange  to  us. 
Each  little  town  as  we  came  to  it  was  in- 
habited by  friendly  men  and  women.  Thanks 
to  Mr.  Cobb  they  were  our  friends.  All  that 
was  wanted  was  that  we  should  be  theirs. 
Hence  the  bitter  disappointment  at  not  being 
able  to  stop  at  one  after  the  other  of  the  towns, 
at  being  denied  the  chance  of  completing  a 
friendship  with  people  whom  we  already  liked. 
But  it  may  well  be  that  we  should  not  really 
have  got  to  know  them  any  better.  We  have 
not,  alas!  Mr.  Cobb's  gift  of  gentle  humor  or 
his  power  of  sympathetic  understanding.  Also 
it  takes  years  to  get  to  know  anyone.  We 
[180] 


THE   LAND    OF   THE   FREE 

could  not,  in  any  case,  have  stayed  for  years  in 
all  these  towns.  Life  has  not  years  enough  in 
it. 

Besides  the  towns  there  were  the  people  we 
met  on  the  trains.  There  was,  for  instance,  a 
man  who  went  up  and  down  selling  apples  and 
grapes  in  little  paper  bags.  We  bought  from 
him  and  while  buying  we  heard  him  speak. 
There  was  no  doubt  about  the  matter.  He  was 
an  Irishman,  and  not  merely  an  Irishman  by 
descent,  the  son  or  grandson  of  an  emigrant, 
but  one  who  had  quite  recently  left  Ireland. 
His  voice  to  our  ears  was  like  well-remembered 
music.  I  know  the  feeling  of  joy  which  comes 
with  landing  from  an  English-manned  steamer 
on  the  quay  in  Dublin  and  hearing  again  the 
Irish  intonation  and  the  Irish  turns  of  phrase. 
But  that  is  an  expected  pleasure.  It  is  noth- 
ing compared  to  the  sudden  delight  of  hearing 
an  Irish  voice  in  some  place  thousands  of  miles 
from  Ireland  where  the  last  thing  you  expect 
to  happen  is  a  meeting  with  an  Irishman.  I 
remember  being  told  of  an  Irishwoman  who 
was  traveling  from  Singapore  to  Ceylon  in  a 

[181] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

steamer.  She  lay  in  her  cabin,  helplessly  ill 
with  some  fever  contracted  during  her  stay  in 
the  Far  East.  She  seemed  incapable  of  taking 
an  interest  in  anything  until  two  men  came  to 
mend  something  in  the  corridor  outside  her 
cabin  door.  They  talked  together  and  at  the 
sound  of  their  voices  the  sick  lady  roused  her- 
self. She  had  found  something  in  life  which 
still  interested  her.  She  wanted  very  much  to 
know  whether  the  men  came  from  County  An- 
trim or  County  Down.  She  was  sure  their 
homes  were  in  one  or  the  other.  The  Irish 
voices  had  stirred  her. 

We  were  neither  sick  nor  apathetic,  but  we 
were  roused  to  fresh  vitality  by  the  sound  of 
our  Irish  apple  seller's  voice.  He  came  from 
County  Wicklow.  He  told  us  so,  needlessly 
indeed,  for  we  knew  it  by  his  talk.  He  had 
been  in  America  for  two  years,  had  drifted 
westward  from  New  York,  was  selling  apples 
in  a  train.  Did  he  like  America?  Was  he 
happy?  Was  he  doing  well?  and — crucial, 
test  question — would  he  like  to  go  back  to  Ire- 
land? 

[182] 


THE    LAND    OF    THE    FREE 

"I  would  so,  if  there  was  any  way  I  could 
get  my  living  there." 

I  suppose  that  is  the  way  it  is  with  the  most 
of  us.  We  have  it  fixed  somehow  in  our  minds 
that  a  living  is  easier  got  anywhere  than  at 
home.  Perhaps  it  is.  Yet  surely  apples  might 
be  sold  in  Ireland  with  as  good  a  hope  of  profit 
as  in  Illinois  or  Tennessee.  Baskets  are  cheap 
at  home,  and  a  basket  is  the  sole  outfit  required 
for  that  trade.  The  apples  themselves  are  as 
easy  to  come  by  in  the  one  place  as  in  the 
other.  But  possibly  there  are  better  openings 
in  America.  The  profession  may  be  over- 
crowded at  home.  Many  professions  are, 
medicine,  for  instance,  and  the  law.  Apple 
selling  may  be  in  the  like  case.  At  all  events, 
here  was  an  Irishman,  doing  fairly  well  by  his 
own  account  in  the  middle  west  of  America 
yet  with  a  sincere  desire  to  go  back  again  to 
Ireland  if  only  he  could  get  a  living  there. 

There  was  another  man  whom  we  met  and 
talked  to  with  great  pleasure.  Our  train  lin- 
gered, as  trains  sometimes  will,  for  an  hour  or 
more  at  a  junction.     It  was  waiting  for  an- 

[183] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

other  train  which  ought  to  have  met  ours,  but 
did  not.  We  sat  on  the  platform  of  the  ob- 
servation car,  and  gazed  at  the  blinking  signal 
lights,  for  the  darkness  had  come.  Suddenly 
a  man  climbed  over  the  rail  of  the  car  and  sat 
down  beside  us.  He  had,  as  we  could  see,  a 
very  dirty  face,  and  very  dirty  hands.  He  wore 
clothes  like  those  of  an  engine  stoker.  He 
was,  I  think,  employed  in  shunting  trains.  He 
apologized  for  startling  us  and  expressed  the 
hope  that  we  had  not  mistaken  him  for  a  mur- 
derous red  Indian.  He  was  a  humorist,  and  he 
had  seen  at  a  glance  that  we  were  innocent 
strangers,  the  sort  of  people  who  might  expect 
an  American  train  to  be  held  up  by  red  Indians 
with  scalping  knives.  He  told  us  a  long  story 
about  a  lady  who  was  walking  from  coach  to 
coach  of  a  train  while  he  was  engaged  in 
shunting  it  about  and  was  detaching  some 
coaches  from  it.  She  was  crossing  the  bridge 
between  two  coaches  at  an  unlucky  moment 
and  found  herself  suddenly  on  the  line  between 
two  portions  of  the  train.  The  expression  of 
her  face  had  greatly  amused  our  friend.  His 
[184] 


THE    LAND    OF    THE    FREE 

account  of  the  incident  greatly  amused  us. 
But  the  most  interesting  thing  about  this  man, 
the  most  interesting  thing  to  us,  was  his  un- 
affected friendliness.  In  England  a  signal 
man  or  a  shunter  would  not  climb  into  a  train, 
sit  down  beside  a  passenger  and  chat  to  him. 
A  miserable  consciousness  of  class  distinction 
would  render  this  kind  of  intercourse  as  impos- 
sible on  the  one  side  as  on  the  other.  Neither 
the  passenger  nor  the  shunter  would  be  com- 
fortable, not  even  if  the  passenger  were  a  Lib- 
eral politician,  or  a  newly  made  Liberal  peer. 
In  America  this  sense  of  class  distinction  does 
not  seem  to  exist.  I  have  heard  English  peo- 
ple complain  that  Americans  are  disrespectful. 
I  should  rather  use  the  word  unrespectful,  if 
such  a  word  existed.  For  disrespectful  seems 
to  imply  that  respect  is  somehow  due,  and  I 
do  not  see  why  it  should  be.  I  am  quite  pre- 
pared to  sign  my  assent  to  the  democratic  creed 
that  one  man  is  as  good  as  another.  I  even  go 
further  than  most  Democrats  and  say  that  one 
man  is  generally  better  than  the  other,  when- 
ever it  happen  that  I  am  the  other.    I  see  no 

[185] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

reason  why  a  railway  signal  man  should  not 
talk  to  me  or  to  anyone  else  in  the  friendly 
tones  of  an  equal,  provided  of  course  that  he 
does  not  turn  out  to  be  a  bore.  It  is  a  glory 
and  not  a  shame  of  American  society  that  it 
refuses  to  recognize  class  distinction. 

My  only  complaint  is  that  America  has  not 
gone  far  enough  in  the  path  of  democratic 
equality.  There  are  Americans  who  take  tips. 
Now  men  neither  take  tips  from  nor  give  tips 
to  their  equals.  If  a  friend  were  to  slip  six- 
pence into  my  hand  when  saying  good-by  I 
should  resent  it  bitterly.  Unless  I  were  quite 
sure  that  he  was  either  drunk  or  mad,  I  should 
feel  that  he  was  deliberately  treating  me  as  his 
inferior.  I  should  admit  that  I  was  his  inferior 
if  I  pocketed  the  tip.  I  should  feel  bound  to 
touch  my  hat  to  him  and  say  "Thank  you, 
Sir,"  or  "Much  obliged  to  your  honor."  No 
man  is  in  any  way  degraded  by  taking  wages 
for  the  work  he  does,  whatever  that  work  may 
be,  cleaning  boots  or  lecturing  in  a  University. 
But  a  man  does  lower  himself  when,  in  addi- 
tion to  his  wages,  he  accepts  gifts  of  money 
[186] 


THE    LAND    OF    THE    FREE 

from  strangers.  He  is  being  paid  then  not  for 
courtesy  or  civility,  which  he  ought  to  show  in 
any  case,  but  for  servility ;  and  that  no  one  can 
render  except  to  a  recognized  superior.  The 
tip  in  a  country  where  class  distinctions  are  a 
regular  part  of  the  social  order  is  right 
enough.  It  is  at  all  events  a  natural  outcome 
of  the  theory  that  some  men  by  reason  of  their 
station  in  life  are  superior  to  others.  In  a  so- 
cial order  which  is  based  upon  the  principle  of 
equality  among  men  the  tip  has  no  proper 
place. 

The  distinction  between  tips  and  wages  is  a 
real  one,  although  it  is  sometimes  obscured  by 
the  fact  that  the  wages  of  some  kinds  of  work 
are  paid  entirely  or  almost  entirely  in  the  form 
of  tips.  A  waiter  in  a  restaurant  or  an  hotel 
lives,  I  believe,  mainly  on  tips.  Tips  are  his 
wages.  Nevertheless  he  places  himself  in  a 
position  of  inferiority  by  allowing  himself  to 
be  paid  in  this  way.  It  is  plain  that  this  is  so. 
There  is  a  sharp  line  which  divides  those  who 
are  tipped  from  those  who  are  not.  It  may, 
for  instance,  be  the  misfortune  of  anyone  to 

[187] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

require  the  services  of  a  hospital  nurse ;  but  we 
do  not  tip  her  however  kind  and  attentive  she 
may  be.  She  gets  her  wages,  her  salary,  a 
fixed  sum.  It  would  be  insulting  to  offer  her, 
in  addition,  five  shillings  for  herself.  Hers  is 
a  profession  which  neither  involves  nor  is  sup- 
posed to  involve  any  loss  of  self  respect.  On 
the  other  hand  the  chambermaid  who  makes 
the  beds  in  an  hotel  is  tipped.  She  expects  it. 
And  her  profession,  in  the  popular  estimation 
at  least,  does  involve  a  certain  loss  of  self 
respect.  The  best  class  of  young  women  are 
unwilling  to  be  domestic  servants,  but  are  not 
unwilling  to  be  hospital  nurses.  Yet  the  hos- 
pital nurse  works  as  hard  as,  if  not  harder 
than,  a  housemaid.  She  does  the  same  kind  of 
work.  There  is  no  real  difference  between 
making  the  bed  of  a  man  who  is  sick  and  mak- 
ing the  bed  of  a  man  who  is  well.  In  either 
case  it  is  a  matter  of  handling  sheets  and  blan- 
kets. But  a  suggestion  of  inferiority  clings 
to  the  profession  of  a  housemaid  and  none  to 
that  of  a  hospital  nurse.  The  reason  is  that 
the  one  woman  belongs  to  the  class  which  takes 
[188] 


THE    LAND    OF    THE    FREE 

tips,  while  the  other  belongs  to  the  class  which 
does  not. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  in  a  country  like  Amer- 
ica into  which  immigrants  are  continually  flow- 
ing from  Europe  there  is  sure  to  be  a  large 
number  of  people — Italian  waiters  for  in- 
stance, and  Swedish  and  Irish  domestic  ser- 
vants— who  have  not  yet  grasped  the  American 
theory  of  social  equality.  They  have  grown 
up  in  countries  where  the  theory  does  not  pre- 
vail. They  naturally  and  inevitably  expect 
and  take  tips,  the  largesse  of  their  recognized 
superiors.  ISTo  one  accustomed  to  European 
life  grudges  them  their  tips.  But  there  are, 
unfortunately,  many  American  citizens,  born 
and  bred  in  America,  with  the  American  theory 
of  equality  in  their  minds,  who  also  take  tips 
and  are  very  much  aggrieved  if  they  do  not 
get  them.  Yet  they,  by  word  and  manner,  are 
continually  asserting  their  position  of  equality 
with  those  who  tip  them.  This  is  where  the 
American  theory  of  equality  between  man  and 
man  breaks  down.  The  driver  of  a  taxicab 
for  instance  can  have  it  one  way  or  the  other. 

[189] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

He  cannot  have  it  both.  He  may,  like  a  doctor, 
a  lawyer,  or  a  plumber,  take  his  regular  fee, 
the  sum  marked  down  on  the  dial  of  his  cab, 
and  treat  his  passenger  as  an  equal.  Or  he 
may  take,  as  a  tip,  an  extra  twenty  cents,  in 
which  case  he  sacrifices  his  equality  and  pro- 
claims himself  the  inferior  of  the  man  who  tips 
him,  a  member  of  a  tippable  class.  There 
ought  to  be  no  tippable  class  of  American 
citizens.  The  English  complaint  of  the  dis- 
respectfulness  of  Americans  is,  in  my  opinion, 
a  foolish  one,  unless  the  American  expects  and 
takes  tips.  Then  the  complaint  is  well  founded 
and  just.  The  tipper  pays  for  respectfulness 
when  he  gives  a  tip  and  what  he  pays  for  he 
ought  to  get. 

It  is,  I  think,  quite  possible  that  the  custom 
of  tipping  has  something  to  do  with  the  dif- 
ficulty, so  acute  in  America,  of  getting  domes- 
tic servants.  It  is  widely  felt  that  domestic 
service  in  some  way  degrades  the  man  or  wom- 
an who  engages  in  it.  There  is  no  real  reason 
why  it  should.  It  is  not  in  itself  degrading 
to  do  things  for  other  people,  even  to  render 
[190] 


THE    LAND    OF    THE    FREE 

intimate  personal  service  to  other  people.  The 
dentist  who  fills  a  tooth  for  me  does  something 
for  me,  renders  me  a  special  kind  of  personal 
service.  He  loses  no  self  respect  by  supplying 
me  with  a  sound  instrument  for  chewing  food. 
Why  should  the  person  who  cooks  the  food 
which  that  tooth  will  chew  lose  self  respect  by 
doing  so  ?  There  is  no  real  distinction  between 
these  two  kinds  of  service.  Nor  is  there  any- 
thing in  the  contention  that  the  domestic  ser- 
vant is  degraded  by  abrogating  her  own  will 
and  taking  orders  from  someone  else.  Nine 
men  out  of  ten  take  orders  from  somebody. 
From  the  soldier  on  the  battlefield,  the  most 
honorable  of  men,  to  the  clerk  in  a  bank,  we 
are  almost  all  of  us  obeying  orders,  doing  not 
what  we  ourselves  think  best  or  pleasantest  but 
what  someone  in  authority  thinks  right.  What 
is  the  difference  between  obeying  when  you  are 
told  to  clean  a  gun  and  obeying  when  you  are 
told  to  wash  a  jug?  The  real  reason  why  a 
suggestion  of  inferiority  clings  to  the  profes- 
sion of  domestic  service  is  that  domestic  ser- 
vants belong  to  the  tippable  class.     Society 

[191] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

can,  if  it  likes,  raise  domestic  service  to  a  place 
among  the  honorable  professions,  by  ceasing 
to  tip  and  paying  wages  which  do  not  require 
to  be  supplemented  by  tips.  If  this  were  done 
there  would  be  far  less  difficulty  in  keeping  up 
the  supply  of  domestic  servants. 

I  find  myself  on  much  more  difficult  ground 
when  I  pass  on  to  discuss  the  impression  made 
on  me  by  the  claim  of  America  to  be,  in  some 
special  way,  a  free  country. 

"To  the  West!  to  the  West!  to  the  land  of 
the  free."  So  my  farmer  friend  sang  to  me 
twenty  years  ago.  The  tradition  survives. 
The  American  citizen  believes  that  a  man  is 
freer  in  America  than  he  is  for  instance  in 
England.  If  freedom  means  the  power  of  the 
individual  to  do  what  he  likes  without  being  in- 
terfered with  by  laws  then  no  man  can  ever 
be  quite  free  anywhere  except  on  a  desert 
island.  I,  as  an  individual,  may  earnestly  de- 
sire to  go  out  into  a  crowded  thoroughfare  and 
shoot  at  the  street  cars  with  a  revolver.  I  am 
not  free  to  do  this  in  any  civilized  country  in 
the  world.  For  people  with  desires  of  that 
[192] 


THE   LAND    OF   THE   FREE 

kind  there  is  no  such  thing  as  liberty.  The 
freedom  of  the  individual  is  everywhere  a  com- 
promise between  his  personal  inclination  and 
the  general  sense  of  the  community.  Men  are 
more  free  where  the  community  makes  fewer 
laws,  less  free  where  the  community  makes 
more.  In  England  I  can,  if  I  like,  buy,  and 
drink  at  dinner,  a  bottle  of  beer  in  the  restau- 
rant car  of  any  train  which  has  a  restaurant 
car,  in  any  part  of  the  country.  In  certain 
states  in  America  I  cannot  buy  a  bottle  of  beer 
in  the  restaurant  car  of  the  train.  There  is  a 
law  which  stops  me.  It  may  be  a  very  good 
law.  The  infringement  of  my  liberty  which 
it  entails  may  be  for  my  good  and  the  good  of 
society  in  general;  but  where  that  law  exists 
I  am  certainly  less  free  than  where  it  does  not 
exist. 

The  tendency  of  modern  democratic  states 
is  to  make  more  and  more  laws  and  thereby  to 
confine  within  ever  narrower  limits  the  free- 
dom of  the  individual  man.  A  few  years  ago 
an  Englishman  could  send  his  child  to  school 
or  keep  his  child  at  home  without  any  educa- 

[193] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

tion  just  as  he  chose.  Now  he  must  send  his 
child  to  school.  The  law  insists  on  it.  The 
Irishman,  in  most  parts  of  Ireland,  can  still, 
if  he  likes,  allow  his  child  to  grow  up  without 
ever  going  to  school.  There  is  no  law  to  inter- 
fere with  him.  In  that  particular  respect  Ire- 
land is  freer  than  England,  for  England  has 
gone  further  along  the  path  of  curtailing  in- 
dividual liberty.  In  the  matter  of  buying  beer 
England  is  freer  than  America,  because  you 
can  buy  beer  anywhere  in  England  if  you  go 
to  a  house  licensed  to  sell  beer.  In  some  parts 
of  America  there  are  no  houses  licensed  to  sell 
beer  and  you  cannot  buy  it.  America  has,  in 
this  particular  respect,  gone  further  than  Eng- 
land along  the  path  of  curtailing  individual 
liberty. 

There  are  several  other  things  about  which 
there  are  laws  in  America  which  do  not  exist 
in  England  and  with  regard  to  which  America 
is  not  so  free  a  country  as  England  is.  But 
there  are  also  laws  in  England  which  do  not 
exist  in  America.  The  Englishman  is  more 
or  less  accustomed  to  his  laws.  He  has  got 
[194] 


THE    LAND    OF    THE    FREE 

into  the  habit  of  obeying  them  and  they  do  not 
seem  to  interfere  with  his  freedom.  The 
American  laws,  to  which  he  is  not  accustomed, 
strike  him  as  unwarrantable  examples  of  minor 
tyranny.  But  it  is  likely  that  the  American 
is,  in  the  same  way,  accustomed  to  his  laws 
and  is  not  irritated  by  them.  He  has  got  into 
the  way  of  not  wanting  to  buy  beer  in  Texas, 
and  does  not  feel  that  his  liberty  is  curtailed 
by  the  existence  of  a  law  which  it  does  not 
occur  to  him  to  break.  He  may  be,  on  the 
other  hand,  profoundly  annoyed  by  English 
laws,  to  which  he  is  not  accustomed.  It  may 
strike  him,  when  he  comes  to  England,  that 
his  liberty  is  being  continually  interfered  with 
just  as  an  Englishman  feels  himself  continu- 
ally hampered  in  America.  I  can,  for  instance, 
understand  that  an  American  in  England 
might  feel  that  his  liberty  was  most  unwar- 
rantably interfered  with  by  the  law  which 
obliges  him  to  have  a  penny  stamp  on  every 
check  he  writes.  It  must  strike  him  as  mon- 
strous that  he  cannot  get  his  own  money  out 
of  a  bank  without  paying  the  government  for 

[195] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

being  allowed  to  do  so.  After  all  it  is  his 
money  and  the  Government  is  not  even  a 
banker.  Why  should  he  pay  for  taking  a 
sovereign  from  the  little  pile  of  sovereigns 
which  his  banker  keeps  for  him  when  he  would 
not  have  to  pay  for  taking  one  out  of  a  stock- 
ing if  he  adopted  the  old-fashioned  plan  of 
keeping  his  money  there?  The  Englishman 
feels  no  annoyance  at  the  payment  of  this 
penny.  He  is  so  entirely  accustomed  to  it  that 
it  seems  to  him  a  violation  of  one  of  the  laws 
of  nature  to  write  a  check  on  a  simple,  un- 
stamped piece  of  paper. 

On  the  whole,  although  the  citizens  of  both 
countries  feel  free  enough  when  they  are  at 
home,  there  is  probably  less  freedom,  that  is 
to  say  there  are  more  laws,  in  America  than  in 
England.  America  is  more  thoroughly  demo- 
cratic in  constitution  than  England  is  and 
therefore  less  free.  This  seems  a  paradox, 
but  is  in  reality  a  simple  statement  of  obvious 
fact,  nor  is  there  any  difficulty  in  seeing  the 
reason  for  it.  Democracies  produce  profes- 
sional politicians.  The  professional  politician 
[196] 


THE   LAND   OF    THE    FREE 

differs  from  the  amateur  or  voluntary  politi- 
cian exactly  as  any  professional  differs  from 
any  amateur.  An  amateur  carpenter  saws 
wood  and  hammers  nails  for  the  fun  of  the 
thing,  and  stops  sawing  and  hammering  as 
soon  as  sawing  and  hammering  cease  to  amuse 
him.  The  professional  carpenter  must  go  on 
sawing  and  hammering  even  if  he  does  not 
want  to,  because  it  is  in  this  way  that  he  earns 
his  bread.  He  therefore  gets  a  great  deal 
more  sawing  and  hammering  done  in  a  year 
than  any  amateur  does.  It  is  the  same  with 
politicians.  The  amateur  politician  makes  a 
law  now  and  then  when  he  feels  like  it.  When 
law-making  ceases  to  interest  him  he  goes  off 
to  hunt  or  fish.  The  professional  politician 
must  go  on  making  laws  even  though  the  busi- 
ness has  become  inexpressibly  wearisome.  Thus 
it  is  that  in  states  where  there  are  professional 
politicians,  in  democratic  states,  there  are  more 
laws,  and  therefore  less  freedom,  than  in  states 
which  only  have  amateur  politicians.  Amer- 
ica, being  slightly  more  democratic  than  Eng- 

[197] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

land,  has  slightly  more  laws  and  slightly  less 
freedom. 

But  it  would  be  easy  to  make  too  much  of 
this  difference  between  England  and  America. 

The  freedom  which  men  value  most  is  very 
little  affected  by  laws.  Laws  neither  give  nor 
withhold  it.  Freedom  is  really  an  atmosphere 
in  which  we  are  able  to  breathe  without  anx- 
iety or  fear.  There  are  some  societies  in  which 
a  man  must  be  constantly  watching  himself 
lest  he  should  give  expression  to  a  thought  or 
an  opinion  which  is  liable  to  offend  some 
powerful  interest  or  outrage  some  cherished 
conviction.  All  sorts  of  unpleasant  conse- 
quences follow  incautious  utterance  of  an  un- 
popular opinion,  or  even  the  discovery  that 
unpopular  opinions  are  held.  It  may  be  that 
the  rash  individual  is  looked  on  very  coldly. 
It  may  be  that  those  who  seem  to  be  his  friends 
gradually  draw  away  from  him.  It  may  be — 
this  is  not  so  unpleasant  but  quite  unpleasant 
enough — that  he  is  assailed  in  newspapers  and 
held  up  in  their  columns  to  public  odium.  It 
may  be  that  he  is  made  to  suffer  in  more  ma- 
[198] 


THE   LAND    OF    THE    FREE 

terial  ways,  that  he  loses  business  or  runs  the 
risk  of  being  deprived  of  some  position  which 
he  holds.  In  very  uncivilized  communities  he 
is  sometimes  actually  treated  with  physical 
violence.  The  windows  of  his  house  are  broken 
or  he  is  mobbed.  The  dread  of  some  or  all  of 
these  penalties  makes  him  very  cautious.  He 
goes  through  life  glancing  timidly  from  side 
to  side,  always  anxious,  always  a  little  fright- 
ened and  therefore — since  fear  is  the  real  an- 
tithesis of  liberty — never  free. 

All  communities  suffer  from  spasmodic  fits 
of  this  kind  of  intolerance.  In  England  in 
the  year  1900  it  was  not  safe  to  be  a  pro-Boer, 
and  England  at  that  time  was  not  a  free 
country.  England  is  now  free  to  quite  an 
extraordinary  extent.  A  man  may  hold  and 
express  almost  any  conceivable  opinion  with- 
out suffering  for  it.  He  can  stand  up  in  a 
public  assembly  and  say  hard  things  about 
England  herself,  point  out  her  faults  in  plain 
and  even  bitter  language.  The  English  people 
as  a  whole  remain  totally  indifferent  to  what 
he  says  about  them.    If  the  hard  thing  is  said 

[199] 


FROM  DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

wittily  they  laugh.  If  it  is  said  dully  they 
yawn.  In  neither  case  do  they  display  any 
signs  of  anger.  They  succeed  in  giving  the 
stranger  in  their  midst  the  impression  that 
nothing  he  does  or  says  matters  in  the  least  so 
long  as  he  avoids  crossing  the  indefinable  line 
which  separates  "good  form"  from  bad.  His 
manners  may  get  him  into  trouble.  His  opin- 
ions will  not. 

America  is  free  too  in  this  same  way,  but 
is  not,  I  think,  so  free  as  England.  There 
are  several  subjects  about  which  it  is  not  wise 
to  talk  quite  freely  in  America.  The  ordinary 
middle  class  American,  the  man  with  whom 
one  falls  into  casual  conversation  in  a  train, 
is  sensitive  about  criticism  of  his  country  and 
its  institutions  in  a  way  that  the  ordinary  Eng- 
lishman is  not.  It  may  very  well  be  that  in 
this  he  is  the  Englishman's  superior.  A  per- 
fectly detached  judge  of  humanity,  some  epi- 
curean deity  observing  all  things  with  passion- 
less calm  and  weighing  all  emotion  in  the  scales 
of  absolute  justice — might,  quite  conceivably, 
rank  a  slightly  resentful  patriotism  higher 
[200] 


THE   LAND    OF   THE   FREE 

than  tolerant  apathy.  We  Irishmen  are  not 
tolerant  of  criticism,  and  I  sincerely  hope  that 
ours  is  the  better  part.  We  do  not  like  the 
expression  of  opinions  which  differ  from  our 
own  and  are  inclined  to  suppress  them  with 
some  violence  when  we  can.  As  a  nation  we 
value  truth  far  more  than  liberty;  truth  being, 
of  course,  the  thing  which  we  ourselves  be- 
lieve ;  obviously  that,  for  we  would  not  believe 
it  unless  we  were  quite  sure  that  it  was  true. 
Americans  are  not  so  whole  hearted  as  we  are 
in  this  matter.  The  more  highly  educated 
Americans  are  even  inclined  to  drift  into  a  tol- 
erant agnosticism  which  is  almost  English. 
But  most  Americans  are  still  a  little  intolerant, 
of  strange  opinions  and  still  have  enough  con- 
scious patriotism  to  resent  criticism. 

It  is  the  fault  of  a  great  quality.  No  so- 
ciety can  be  both  enthusiastic  and  free.  It  is 
the  tips  and  the  equality  over  again.  We  can 
not  have  things  both  ways.  If  society  allows 
a  man,  without  pain  or  penalty,  to  say  exactly 
what  he  means,  it  is  always  because  that  so- 
ciety is  convinced,  deep  down  in  its  soul,  that 

[201] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

he  cannot  possibly  mean  what  he  says.  A  man 
is  free  to  speak  what  he  chooses,  to  criticize, 
to  abuse,  to  sneer,  wherever  his  fellow  men 
have  made  up  their  minds  that  it  does  not  mat- 
ter what  he  says  how  keenly  he  criticizes, 
abuses  or  sneers.  On  the  other  hand,  a  society 
which  is  very  much  in  earnest  atout  anything, 
— and  a  great  many  Americans  are — will  not 
suffer  differences  of  opinion  patiently  and  will 
always  be  resentful  of  criticism.  Say  to  an 
Englishman  that  American  football  is  superior 
to  the  Rugby  Union  game.  He  will  look  at 
you  with  a  sleepy  expression  in  his  eyes,  and, 
after  a  short  pause,  politeness  requiring  some 
answer  from  him,  he  will  say:  "Is  it  really?" 
His  tone  suggests  that  he  does  not  care 
whether  it  is  or  not,  but  that  he  means  to  go 
on  playing  the  Rugby  Union  game  if  he  plays 
at  all,  a  point  about  which  he  has  not  quite 
made  up  his  mind.  Say  to  an  American  that 
Rugby  Union  football  is  superior  to  his  game 
and  he  will  look  at  you  with  highly  alert  but 
slightly  troubled  eyes.  He  wants  to  respect 
you  if  he  can,  and  he  does  not  like  to  hear  you 
[202] 


THE   LAND    OF    THE   FREE 

saying  a  thing  which  cannot  possibly  be  true. 
But  he  too  is  polite. 

"There  may  be,"  he  says,  "some  points  of 
superiority  about  the  English  game — but  on 
the  whole — think  of  the  organization  of  our 
forwards.  Think  of  the  amount  of  thought 
required.    Think  of  the  rapid  decisions  which 

have  to  be  made.     Think  of But  come 

and  see  the  match  next  Saturday  and  then 
you'll  understand." 

There  is  still  another  kind  of  freedom — free- 
dom to  behave  as  we  like,  freedom  of  man- 
ners. This  is  almost  as  important  as  freedom 
to  speak  and  think  without  fear  of  conse- 
quences. Indeed,  for  most  people  it  is  more 
important.  Only  a  few  of  us  think,  or  want 
to  say  what  we  think.  All  of  us  have  to  be- 
have, to  have  manners  of  some  sort  either  good 
or  bad.  It  is  curious  to  notice  that,  while  men 
everywhere  are  acquiescing  without  much  pro- 
test to  the  curtailment  of  the  sort  of  freedom 
which  is  affected  by  law,  they  are  steadily 
claiming  and  securing  more  and  more  freedom 
of  manners.    We  are  far  less  bound  by  con- 

[203] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

ventions  than  we  used  to  be.  There  was  a  time 
when  everybody  possessed  and  once  a  week 
wore  what  were  called  "Sunday  clothes."  One 
hardly  ever  hears  the  phrase  now,  and  men 
go  to  church  in  coats  which  would  have  struck 
their  grandmothers  as  distinctly  unsuited  to  a 
place  of  worship.  Sunday  clothes  were  a  bond- 
age and  we  have  broken  free.  There  was,  very 
long  ago,  a  definite  code  of  manners  binding 
upon  men  and  women  when  they  met  together. 
When  it  prevailed  the  intercourse  between  the 
sexes  must  have  been  singularly  stiff  and  un- 
comfortable. There  were  many  things  which 
a  woman  could  not  do  without  losing  her  char- 
acter for  womanliness,  and  many  things  which 
a  man  could  not  do  in  the  company  of  ladies 
— smoke,  for  instance. 

It  is,  I  think,  women  and  not  men  who  de- 
cide how  much  of  this  sort  of  liberty  people 
are  to  enjoy.  If  I  am  right  about  this,  then 
American  women  are  more  generous  than 
English  women.  There  is  much  more  free- 
dom in  the  matter  of  clothes  in  America  than 
England.  I  remember  hearing  an  English- 
[204] 


THE   LAND    OF   THE   FREE 

woman  complain  that  no  matter  how  she  tried 
she  never  could  succeed  in  dressing  correctly 
in  America.  In  England  she  knew  exactly 
the  kind  of  gown  to  wear  at  an  afternoon 
party,  at  a  small  dinner,  at  a  large  dinner,  at 
an  evening  reception,  in  the  box  of  a  theater. 
In  America  she  perpetually  found  herself 
wearing  the  wrong  thing.  I  imagine  that  in 
reality  she  did  not  wear  the  wrong  thing,  be- 
cause there  is  no  such  rigid  standard  of  ap- 
propriateness of  dress  in  America  as  there  is 
in  England.  More  latitude  is  allowed,  and  if 
a  gown  is  hardly  ever  correct  it  is  also  hardly 
ever  wrong.  Every  man  who  sits  in  the  stalls 
of  a  London  theater  must  display  eighteen 
inches  of  white  shirt  above  the  top  button  of  his 
waistcoat.  In  America  he  may  wear  a  blue 
flannel  shirt  if  he  likes,  and  nobody  cares 
whether  it  is  visible  beneath  his  tie  or  not.  In 
England  a  man  who  dines  in  a  very  smart  res- 
taurant must  wear  a  tail  coat  and  a  white  tie. 
In  America  he  can,  if  he  chooses,  wear  a  tail 
coat  and  a  black  tie,  or  a  short  coat  and  a 

[205] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

white  tie.  There  is  no  fixed  rule  determining 
the  connection  between  coats  and  ties. 

It  is  not  only  the  class  of  people  who  dine 
in  smart  restaurants  and  sit  in  stalls  of  the- 
aters which  is  subject  to  rules  of  this  kind. 
Every  class  has  its  own  conventions,  and,  so 
far  as  my  observation  goes,  every  class  is  a 
little  freer  in  America  than  it  is  in  England. 
No  English  chauffeur  with  any  self-respect 
would  consent  to  drive  a  motor  car  about  Lon- 
don unless  he  were  wearing  some  kind  of  uni- 
form. In  America  the  most  magnificent  cars 
are  frequently  driven  by  chauffeurs  in  gray 
tweed  suits  with  ordinary  caps  on  their  heads. 

I  am  nearly  sure  that  it  is  women,  the  women 
of  our  own  class,  who  decide  what  clothes  we 
shall  wear  and  what  clothes  they  will  wear 
themselves.  I  am  quite  sure  that  it  is  they 
who  regulate  the  degree  of  formal  stiffness 
there  is  to  be  in  our  intercourse  with  them. 
English  women  have  to  a  very  considerable 
extent  given  up  requiring  from  men  those  sym- 
bols of  respect  which  had  long  ago  ceased  to 
be  anything  but  the  mere  conventional  sur- 
[206] 


THE    LAND    OF    THE    FREE 

vivals  of  the  mediaeval  idea  of  chivalry.  Men 
and  women  in  England  meet  on  friendlier  and 
more  equal  terms  than  they  used  to.  Ameri- 
can women  have  gone  even  further  than  the 
English  in  setting  themselves  and  us  free  from 
the  old  restrictions.  They  invite  comradeship 
and  have,  as  far  as  possible,  swept  away  the 
barriers  to  free  intercourse  between  sex  and 
sex. 

To  some  people  liberty  of  any  sort,  liberty 
for  its  own  sake,  will  always  seem  a  desirable 
thing.  These  will  prefer  the  manners  of 
America  to  those  of  England,  but  will  cling 
to  their  admiration  of  the  Englishman's  toler- 
ance of  criticism.  There  are  others — it  is  a 
matter  of  temperament — who  prefer  restraint, 
who  like  to  talk  cautiously,  who  cling  to  social 
conventions.  To  them  it  will  be  a  comfort  to 
know  that  in  one  respect  the  American  woman 
is  not  so  free  as  her  English  sister.  In  Eng- 
land a  woman  may,  without  loss  of  reputation, 
smoke  almost  anywhere,  anywhere  that  men 
smoke,  except  in  the  streets  and  the  entrance 
halls  of  theaters.    In  New  York  there  are  only 

[207] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

two  or  three  restaurants  in  which  a  woman  is 
allowed  to  smoke.  Even  if  she  is  indifferent 
to  her  reputation  and  does  not  mind  being 
considered  fast,  she  cannot  smoke  in  the  other 
restaurants.  The  head  waiter  comes  and  stops 
her  if  she  tries.  This  may  be  quite  right.  I 
do  not  know  whether  it  is  or  not.  Many  very 
strong  arguments  may  be  and  are  brought 
against  women  smoking.  It  is,  I  am  thankful 
to  say,  no  business  of  mine  to  weigh  them 
against  the  other  arguments  which  go  to  show 
that  women  are  as  well  entitled  to  the  solace 
of  tobacco  as  men  are.  What  interests  me  far 
more  than  the  arguments  on  either  side  is  the 
fact  that  American  women  are  in  this  one  re- 
spect much  less  free  than  English  women.  The 
women  of  both  nations  smoke,  but  the  Ameri- 
can woman  must  do  it  in  privacy  or  semi- 
privacy.  The  Englishwoman  inhales  her  cig- 
arette with  untroubled  enjoyment  in  any  res- 
taurant in  London.  She  must  dress  herself 
strictly  as  convention  prescribes  for  each  oc- 
casion. She  must  be  a  little  careful  in  her 
intercourse  with  men.  She  has  not  yet  got  a 
[208] 


THE   LAND   OF    THE   FREE 

vote.  But  she  may  smoke.  The  American 
woman  has  much  more  freedom  in  the  mat- 
ter of  clothes.  She  can  be  as  friendly  with  a 
man  as  she  likes.  In  several  states  she  has 
a  vote.  But  society  in  general  frowns  on  her 
smoking  and  sets  its  policeman,  the  head 
waiter,  to  prevent  her  doing  it.  I  should  my- 
self prefer  a  cigarette  to  a  vote ;  but  I  am  fond 
of  tobacco,  and  all  elections  bore  me,  so  I  am 
not  an  unprejudiced  judge.  American  women 
may  be  in  this  matter,  as  indeed  they  certainly 
are  in  other  matters,  nobler  than  I  am.  They 
may  gladly  sacrifice  tobacco  for  the  sake  of 
the  franchise,  but  I  do  not  see  why  they  should 
not  have  both. 


[209] 


CHAPTER  IX 

WOMAN  IN  THE  STATES 

There  is  a  story  told  about  Lord  Beacons- 
field  which,  if  true,  goes  to  show  that  he  was 
not  nearly  so  astute  a  man  as  is  generally  sup- 
posed. A  lady,  an  ardent  advocate  of  Woman 
Suffrage,  once  called  on  him  and  tried  to  con- 
vince him  of  the  justice  of  her  cause.  She 
was  a  very  pretty  lady  and  she  spoke  with 
great  enthusiasm.  One  imagines  flashing  eyes, 
heightened  color,  graceful  gestures  of  the 
hands.  Lord  Beaconsfield  listened  to  her  and 
looked  at  her.  When  she  had  finished  speak- 
ing he  said:  "You  darling!"  The  lady,  we 
are  told,  was  angry,  thinking  that  she  had  been 
insulted.  She  was  perfectly  right.  The  re- 
mark, which  might  under  other  circumstances 
have  been  received  with  blushing  satisfaction, 
was  just  then  and  there  a  piece  of  intolerable 
[210] 


WOMAN   IN    THE    STATES 

rudeness.  It  was  stupid  besides.  But  per- 
haps the  great  statesman  meant  to  be  rude. 
Perhaps,  on  the  other  hand,  he  was  carried 
away  for  the  moment  and  ceased  to  be  intel- 
ligent. Perhaps  the  whole  story  was  invented 
by  some  malicious  person  and  is  entirely  with- 
out foundation.  In  any  case  it  is  a  serious 
warning  to  the  man  who  sits  down  to  write 
about  American  women.  It  makes  him  hesi- 
tate, fearfully,  before  venturing  to  say  the 

very  first  thing  he  must  want  to  say.  But  he 
who  writes  takes  his  life  in  his  hands.  I  should 
be  little  better  than  a  poltroon  if  I  shrank 
from  uttering  the  truth. 

I  was  asked  by  an  able  and  influential  edi- 
tor in  New  York  to  write  an  article  on  Amer- 
ican women.  It  is  not  every  day  that  I  am 
thus  invited  to  write  articles,  so  I  take  a  par- 
donable pride  in  mentioning  the  request  of 
this  American  editor.  It  was  after  dinner 
that  he  asked  me,  and  a  lady  who  was  with  us 
heard  him  do  it.  I  looked  at  her  before  I  an- 
swered. If  she  had  scowled  or  even  frowned 
I  should  not  now  be  writing  about  American 

[211] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

women.  She  encouraged  me  with  a  nod  and  a 
smile.  Yet  she  knew — she  must  have  known 
— what  I  should  write  first  of  all.  Upon  her 
head  be  at  least  part  of  the  blame.  She  not 
merely  smiled.  She  went  on  to  persuade  me 
to  write  the  article.  By  persuading  me  she 
helped  to  make  me  quite  certain  that  what  I 
am  writing  is  true. 

The  American  woman  is  singularly  charm- 
ing. 

Is  this  an  insult?  I  think  of  the  many 
American  women  whom  I  met  who  were  kind 
enough  to  talk  to  me,  and  I  know  that  this 
is  not  what  they  would  like  to  have  written 
about  them.  Some  of  them  were  very  earnest 
knights  errant,  who  rode  about  redressing  hu- 
man wrongs.  It  happens  occasionally,  not 
often,  of  course,  but  very  occasionally,  that 
women  with  causes  are  not  charming.  They 
are  inclined  to  overemphasize  their  causes,  to 
keep  on  hammering  at  a  possible  convert,  to 
become  just  a  little  tiresome.  This  is,  as  far 
as  I  could  judge,  never  the  case  with  the  Amer- 
ican ladies  who  have  causes.  Others  whom  I 
[212] 


WOMAN    IN    THE    STATES 

met  were  learned  and  knew  all  about  philoso- 
phies dim  to  me.  Others  again  were  highly- 
cultured.  I  am  an  ignorant  and  stupid  man. 
Very  clever  women  sometimes  frighten  me.  I 
was  never  frightened  in  America.  Others 
again,  without  being  learned  or  particularly 
cultured,  were  brilliant.  They  were  all  charm- 
ing. That  is  the  truth.  I  have  written  it,  and 
if  the  skies  come  tumbling  indignantly  about 
my  ears  they  just  must  tumble.  "Impavidum 
ferient  ruince;3  but  I  hope  nothing  so  bad  as 
that  will  happen  to  me. 

There  are  people  in  the  world  who  believe 
that  we  are  born  again  and  again,  rising  or 
sinking  in  the  scale  of  living  things  at  each 
successive  incarnation  according  as  we  behave 
ourselves  well  or  badly  in  our  present  state. 
If  this  creed  were  true,  I  should  try  very  hard 
indeed  to  be  good,  because  I  should  want,  next 
time  I  am  born,  to  be  an  American  woman. 
She  seems  to  me  to  have  a  better  kind  of  life 
than  the  woman  of  any  other  nation,  or,  in- 
deed, than  anybody  else,  man  or  woman.  She 
is,  as  I  hope  I  have  suggested,  more  free  than 

[213] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

her  European  sister.  "So  full  of  burrs,"  said 
a  great  lady  of  old  times,  "is  this  work-a-day 
world,  that  our  very  petticoats  will  catch 
them."  This  is  a  true  estimate  of  the  position 
of  the  European  woman.  They  who  wear  petti- 
coatsi  over  here  must  walk  warily  with  chaper- 
ons beside  them.  But  in  America  there  are 
either  fewer  burrs  or  petticoats  are  made  of 
some  better  material.  The  American  woman, 
even  when  she  is  quite  young,  can  go  freely 
enough  and  no  scandalous  suggestions  attach 
to  her  unless  she  does  something  very  out- 
rageous. She  has  in  other  ways  too  a  far 
better  time  than  the  English  woman.  Ameri- 
can social  life  seems  to  me — the  word  is  one 
to  apologize  for — gynocentric.  It  is  arranged 
with  a  view  to  the  convenience  and  delight  of 
women.  Men  come  in  where  and  how  they 
can.  The  late  Mr.  Price  Collier  observed 
this,  and  drew  from  it  the  deduction  that  the 
English  man  tends  on  the  whole  to  be  more 
efficient  than  the  American,  everything  in  an 
English  home  being  sacrificed  to  his  good. 
That  may  or  may  not  be  true ;  but  I  think  the 
[214] 


WOMAN   IN    THE    STATES 

American  woman  is  certainly  more  her  own 
mistress  than  the  Englishwoman,  just  because 
America  does  its  best  for  women  and  only  its 
second  best  for  men. 

I  do  not  pretend  to  be  superior  to  these 
advantages.  I  like  a  good  time  as  well  as  any 
one.  But  I  have  other  ambitions.  And  I  do 
not  want  to  be  an  American  woman  only  for 
the  sake  of  material  gains.  She  seems  to  me 
to  deserve  her  good  luck  because  she  has  done 
her  business  in  life  exceedingly  well,  better 
on  the  whole  than  the  American  man  has  done 
his. 

I  am — I  wish  to  make  this  clear  at  once — a 
good  feminist.  No  man  is  less  inclined  than 
I  am  to  endorse  the  words  of  the  German 
Emperor  and  confine  woman's  activities  to 
"Kirche,  Kuche  und  Kinder."  I  would,  if  I 
had  my  way,  give  every  woman  a  vote.  I 
would  invite  her  to  discuss  the  most  intricate 
political  problems,  with  a  full  confidence  that 
she  could  not  possibly  make  a  worse  muddle 
of  them  than  our  male  politicians  do.  I  should 
like  to  see  her  conducting  great  businesses, 

[215] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

doctoring  her  neighbors,  pleading  for  them  in 
law  courts,  driving  railway  engines,  and,  if  she 
wanted  to,  carrying  a  rifle  or  steering  a  sub- 
marine. I  would  place  woman  in  every  pos- 
sible way  on  an  equality  with  man  and  confine 
her  with  no  restriction  except  those  with  which 
she  voluntarily  impedes  her  own  activities,  like 
petticoats,  stays,  and  blouses  which  hook  up 
the  back.  Having  made  this  full  confession 
of  faith,  I  shall  not,  I  hope,  be  reproached 
for  appearing  to  recognize  a  distinction  be- 
tween woman's  business  in  life,  the  thing  which 
the  American  woman  has  done  very  well,  and 
man's  business,  which  the  American  man 
seems  to  me  to  have  managed  rather  badly. 
Strictly  speaking,  in  the  ideal  state  all  public 
affairs  are  women's  just  as  much  as  men's. 
Strictly  speaking,  again  in  the  ideal  state,  man 
is  just  as  responsible  as  woman  for  the  arts 
of  domestic  life.  But  we  are  not  yet  living 
in  the  ideal  state,  and  for  a  long  while  now 
the  household  has  been  recognized  as  woman's 
sphere,  while  man  has  resented  her  interfer- 
[216] 


WOMAN   IN    THE    STATES 

ence  with  anything  outside  the  circle  of  social 
and  family  life. 

It  is  in  these  matters  which  have  been  en- 
trusted to  her  that  the  American  woman  has 
shown  herself  superior  to  the  American  man. 
I  admit,  of  course,  that  the  American  man  has 
done  a  great  many  things  very  brilliantly.  But! 
he  does  not  seem  to  me  to  have  succeeded  inj 
making  the  business  of  living,  so  far  as  it  f all$ 
within  his  province,  either  comfortable  or 
agreeable.  The  Englishman  has  done  better. 
Examples  of  what  I  mean  absolutely  crowd 
upon  me.  Take  the  question  of  cooking  food. 
The  American  man,  left  to  his  own  devices,  is 
not  strikingly  successful  with  food.  The 
highest  average  of  cooking  in  England  is  to  be 
found  in  good  men's  clubs.  You  may,  and 
often  do,  get  excellent  dinners  in  private 
houses  in  England;  but  you  are  surer  of  an 
excellent  dinner  in  a  first  rate  club.  In  Amer- 
ica it  is  the  other  way  about.  Many  men's 
clubs  have  skilful  cooks,  but  you  are  on  the 
whole  more  likely  to  get  very  good  food  in  a 
woman's  club  or  in  a  private  house  than  in  a 

[217] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

man's  club.  I  am  not  myself  an  expert  in 
cooked  food.  The  subject  has  never  had  a 
real  fascination  for  me.  But  I  have  a  sense 
of  taste  like  my  better  educated  gourmet 
brethren,  and  I  am  convinced  that  where  the 
American  woman  has  control  of  the  cooking 
the  business  is  better  done  than  it  generally  is 
in  England,  and  far  better  done  than  when  it 
is  left  to  American  men. 

The  kindred  subjects  of  drinks,  again, 
marks  the  superiority  of  the  American  woman. 
For  some  reason  quite  obscure  to  me,  women 
are  not  supposed  to  know  anything  about  wine. 
They  either  do  not  like  it  at  all  or  they  like 
bad  kinds  of  wine.  Wine  is  man's  business  in 
all  countries.  In  America  wine  is  dear,  and 
usually  of  indifferent  quality.  Man  has  mis- 
managed the  cellar.  On  the  other  hand, 
women  are  supposed — again  the  reason  is  be- 
yond me — to  like  eating  sweets,  to  be  special- 
ists in  that  whole  range  of  food  which  in 
America  goes  under  the  name  of  candies.  Men 
have  not  created  the  demand  for  candies  or 
secured  the  supply.  They  are  woman's  affair. 
[218] 


WOMAN    IN    THE    STATES 

The  consequence  is  that  American  candies  are 
better  than  any  others  in  the  world,  better  even 
than  the  French.  It  is  necessary  to  search 
New  York  narrowly  and  patiently  in  order  to 
find  a  good  bottle  of  claret.  I  speak  on  this 
matter  as  an  outsider,  for  I  drink  but  little 
claret  myself;  but  I  am  assured  by  highly 
skilled  experts  that  the  fact  is  as  I  state  it. 
On  the  other  hand — I  know  this  by  experi- 
ence— you  can  satisfy  your  soul  with  an  al- 
most infinite  variety  of  chocolates  without  go- 
ing three  hundred  yards  from  the  door  of 
your  hotel  in  New  York  or  Philadelphia. 

The  one  form  of  alcoholic  drink  in  which 
America  surpasses  the  rest  of  the  world  is  the 
cocktail.  I  have  never  yet  seen  a  properly 
written  history  of  cocktails.  The  subject  still 
waits  its  philosopher.  But  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  the  cocktail,  the  original  of  the 
species,  Manhattan,  Bronx  or  whatever  it  may 
have  been,  was  invented  by  a  woman.  True, 
these  drinks  are  now  universally  mixed  by  men. 
But  the  inspiration  is  unquestionably  feminine. 
Formulas  for  the  making  of  cocktails  exist. 

[219] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

I  was  once  asked  to  review  a  book  which  con- 
tained several  hundred  receipts  for  cocktails. 
But  every  one  agrees  that  the  formula  is  of 
minor  importance.  The  cocktail  depends  for 
its  excellence  not  on  careful  measurements, 
but  on  the  incalculable  and  indescribable  thing 
called  personality.  The  most  skilful  phar- 
maceutical chemist,  trained  all  his  life  to  the 
accurate  weighing  of  scruples  and  measure- 
ment of  drams,  might  well  fail  as  a  maker  of 
cocktails.  He  would  fail  if  he  did  not  possess 
an  instinct  for  the  art.  Now  this  is  charac- 
teristic of  all  women's  work.  Man  reaches 
his  conclusions  by  argument,  bases  his  convic- 
tions on  reason,  and  is  generally  wrong. 
Woman  responds  to  emotion,  follows  instinct, 
and  is  very  often  right.  Man  is  the  drudging 
scientist,  patient,  dull.  Woman  is  the  dashing 
empiricist,  inconsequential,  brilliant.  The 
cocktail  must  be  hers.  I  shall  continue,  until 
strong  evidence  to  the  contrary  is  offered  to 
me,  to  believe  that  the  credit  for  this  glory  of 
American  life  belongs  to  her  and  not  to  man. 
It  would,  no  doubt,  be  insulting  to  say  that 
[220] 


WOMAN   IN   THE    STATES 

part  of  the  business  of  a  woman,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  a  man,  is  to  dress  well  and 
be  agreeable.  I  should  not  dream  of  saying 
such  a  thing.  But  there  can  be  no  harm  in 
suggesting  that  it  is  the  duty  of  both  sexes  to 
do  these  things.  There  is  no  real  reason  why 
an  idealist,  man  or  woman,  should  not  be  pleas- 
ant to  look  at,  nor  is  it  necessary  that  very 
estimable  people  should  administer  snubs  to 
the  rest  of  us.  It  seems  to  me  that  even  very 
good  people  are  better  when  they  have  nice 
manners  and  pleasanter  when  they  dress  well. 
It  is  not,  I  admit,  their  fault  when  they  are 
not  good  looking,  but  it  is  their  fault  if  they 
do  not,  by  means  of  clothes,  make  themselves 
as  good  looking  as  they  can.  There  is  no  ex- 
cuse for  the  man  or  woman  who  emphasizes 
a  natural  ugliness.  Man,  I  regret  to  say,  does 
not  often  recognize  his  duty  in  these  matters. 
Woman,  generally  speaking,  has  done  her  best. 
The  American  woman  has  made  the  very  most 
of  her  opportunities  and  has  succeeded  both 
in  looking  nice  and  in  being  an  agreeable  com- 
panion.   In  the  art  of  putting  on  her  clothes 

[221] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

she  has  no  superior  except  the  Parisienne,  and 
even  in  Paris  itself  it  is  often  difficult  to  tell, 
without  hearing  her  speak,  whether  the  lady 
at  the  next  table  in  a  restaurant  is  French  or 
American.  I  knew  an  English  mother  who 
sent  her  daughter  to  Paris  for  six  months  in 
order  that  the  girl  might  learn  to  dress  herself. 
The  journey  to  America  would  have  been 
longer,  but  once  there  the  girl  would  have  had 
just  as  good  a  chance  of  acquiring  the  art.  I 
am  very  unskilful  in  describing  clothes,  and 
the  finer  nuances  of  costume  are  far  beyond 
the  power  of  any  language  at  my  command 
to  express.  But  it  is  possible  to  appreciate 
effects  without  being  able  to  analyze  the  way 
in  which  they  are  produced.  The  effect  on 
the  emotions  of  a  symphony  rendered  by  a 
good  orchestra  is  almost  as  great  for  the  man 
who  does  not  know  exactly  what  the  trombones 
are  doing  as  it  is  for  the  musician  who  under- 
stands that  they  are  adding  to  the  general 
noise  by  playing  chromatic  scales,  or  whatever 
it  is  that  trombones  do  play.  It  is  the  same 
with  clothes.  I  cannot  name  materials,  or  dis- 
[222] 


WOMAN    IN    THE    STATES 

cuss  styles  in  technical  language,  but  I  am 
pleasantly  conscious  that  the  American  woman 
has  the  air  of  being  very  well  dressed. 

I  am  not  attempting  to  make  a  comparison 
between  the  clothes  of  very  wealthy  women 
of  the  leisured  classes  in  America  and  those 
of  women  similarly  placed  in  other  countries. 
Aristocracies  and  plutocracies  are  cosmopoli- 
tan. National  characteristics  are  to  a  consid- 
erable extent  smoothed  off  them.  The  women 
of  these  classes  dress  almost  equally  well 
everywhere.  The  possibility  of  comparison 
exists  only  when  one  considers  the  compara- 
tively poor  women  of  the  middle  and  lower 
middle  classes.  It  is  these  who,  in  America, 
have  the  instinct  for  dressing  well  unusually 
highly  developed.  Some  women  have  this  in- 
stinct. Others  have  not.  It  seems  to  be  dis- 
tributed geographically.  There  are  cities — no 
bribe  would  induce  me  to  name  one  of  them — 
where  the  women  are  usually  badly  dressed. 
You  walk  up  and  down  the  chief  thorough- 
fares. You  enter  the  most  fashionable  restau- 
rants and  are  oppressed  by  a  sense  of  pre- 

[223] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

vailing  dowdiness.  It  is  not  a  question  of 
money.  The  gowns  which  you  see,  the  coats, 
the  hats  have  obviously  cost  great  sums.  For 
half  the  expenditure  women  in  other  places 
look  well  dressed.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  the 
skill  of  dressmakers  and  milliners.  A  woman 
who  has  not  got  the  instinct  for  clothes  might 
go  to — I  forget  the  man's  name,  but  he  is  the 
chief  costumier  in  Paris — might  give  him  a 
free  hand  to  do  his  best  for  her,  and  after- 
wards she  would  not  look  a  bit  better  dressed. 
It  is  not,  I  believe,  possible  to  explain  exactly 
what  she  lacks.  It  is  an  extra  sense,  as  incom- 
municable as  an  ear  for  music.  A  woman 
either  has  it  or  has  not.  The  American  woman 
has  it. 

I  know — no  one  knows  better  than  I  do — 
that  it  is  a  contemptible  thing  to  take  any  no- 
tice of  clothes.  The  soul  is  what  matters.  The 
body  may  be  in  rags.  The  mind  is  what  counts, 
and  fine  feathers  do  not  make  fine  birds.  A 
great  prophet  would  not  be  the  less  a  great 
prophet  though  his  finger  nails  were  black.  I 
hope  we  should  all  adore  him  just  the  same 
[224] 


WOMAN   IN    THE    STATES 

even  if  he  never  washed  his  face  or  wore  a 
collar.  But  just  at  first,  before  we  got  to 
know  him  really  well,  it  is  possible  that  we 
might  be  a  little  prejudiced  against  him  if  he 
looked  as  if  he  never  washed.  That  is  all  I 
wish  or  mean  to  say  about  the  American 
woman's  power  of  dressing  herself.  It  dis- 
arms prejudice.  The  stranger  starts  fair,  so 
to  speak,  when  he  is  introduced  to  her.  In  the 
case  of  women  who  cannot,  or  for  any  reason 
will  not,  dress  themselves  nicely,  there  are  pre- 
liminary difficulties  in  the  way  of  appreciating 
their  real  worth. 

But  the  best  clothes  in  the  world  are  no  help 
when  it  comes  to  conversation,  unless,  indeed, 
one  is  able  to  discuss  them  in  detail,  and  I  am 
not.  I  have  met  exquisitely  dressed  women 
who  were  very  difficult  to  talk  to.  The  Amer- 
ican woman  is  not  one  of  these.  Besides  being 
well  dressed,  she  is  a  delightful  talker  on  all 
subjects.  She  may  or  may  not  be  profound. 
I  am  not  profound  myself,  so  I  have  no  way 
of  judging  about  that.  But  profoundness  is 
not  wanted  in  conversation.    Its  proper  place 

[225] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

is  in  scientific  books.  In  conversation  it  is 
merely  a  nuisance,  and  the  American  woman, 
when  she  is  profound,  has  more  sense  than  to 
show  it.  She  talks  well  because  she  is  not  in 
the  least  shy  or  self-conscious.  Even  young 
American  girls  are  not  shy.  Brought  into  sud- 
den contact  with  a  middle-aged  man,  they  treat 
him  as  an  equal,  with  a  frank  sense  of  com- 
radeship. They  have,  apparently,  no  awe  of 
advanced  or  advancing  years.  They  do  not 
pretend  to  think  that  elderly  people  are  in  any 
way  their  superiors,  or  display  in  the  presence 
of  the  aged  that  kind  of  chilling  aloofness 
which  is  called  respect.  I  detest  people  who 
behave  as  if  they  respected  me  because  I  am 
older  than  they  are.  I  recognize  at  once  that 
they  are  hypocrites.  Boys  and  girls  must 
know,  in  their  hearts,  just  as  well  as  we  do, 
that  respect  is  due  to  the  young  from  the  eld- 
erly and  not  the  other  way  about.  The  ancient 
Romans  understood  this:  "Maxima  debitur 
reverentia  pueris"  is  in  the  Latin  grammar, 
and  the  Latin  grammar  is  a  good  authority 
[226] 


WOMAN    IN    THE    STATES 

on  all  subjects  connected  with  ancient  Roman 
civilization. 

It  is  her  power  of  making  herself  agreeable 
which  is  the  greatest  charm  of  the  American 
woman,  a  greater  charm  than  her  ability  in 
dressing.  I  am  a  man  very  little  practiced  in 
the  art  of  conversation.  A  dinner  party — a 
party  of  any  kind,  but  particularly  a  dinner 
party — is  a  thing  from  which  I  shrink.  I  am 
always  very  sorry  for  the  two  women  who  are 
placed  beside  me.  I  know  that  they  will  have 
to  make  great  exertions  to  keep  up  a  conver- 
sation with  me.  I  watch  them  suffering  and 
am  myself  a  prey  to  excruciating  pangs  of 
self-reproach.  But  my  agony  is  less  in  Amer- 
ica than  elsewhere.  The  American  woman 
must  of  course  suffer  as  much  as  the  English- 
woman when  I  take  her  in  to  dinner;  but  she 
possesses  in  an  extraordinary  degree  the  art 
of  not  showing  it.  She  frequently  deceives 
me  for  several  minutes  at  a  time,  making  me 
think  that  she  is  actually  enjoying  herself. 
She  is  able  to  do  this  because  she  has  an  amaz- 
ing vitality  and  a  very  acute  kind  of  intelli- 

[227] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

gence.  Now,  the  highest  compliment  which  a 
woman  can  pay  to  a  man  is  to  enjoy  his  com- 
pany. The  American  woman  understands  this 
and  succeeds  in  pretending  she  is  doing  it.  She 
is  wise,  too.  Recognizing  that  even  her  powers 
have  their  limits,  and  that  no  woman,  however 
vital  and  intelligent,  can  go  on  disguising  her 
weariness  for  very  long,  she  makes  her  din- 
ners and  luncheons  as  short  as  possible,  shorter 
than  similar  functions  are  in  England.  She 
does  not  attempt  anything  in  the  way  of  a 
long-distance  contest  with  the  heavy  stupidity 
of  the  ordinary  man.  Her's  is  the  triumph  of 
the  sprinter.  For  a  short  time  she  flashes, 
sympathizes,  subtly  flatters,  talks  with  amaz- 
ing brilliance,  charms.  Then  she  escapes. 
What  happens  to  her  next  I  can  only  guess, 
but  I  imagine  that  she  must  be  very  much 
exhausted. 


[228] 


CHAPTER  X 

MEN    AND    HUSBANDS 

Comic  papers  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic 
have  adopted  the  marriages  between  Ameri- 
can women  and  English  men  of  the  upper 
classes  as  a  standing  joke;  one  of  those  jokes 
of  which  the  public  never  gets  tired,  whose 
infinite  variety  repetition  does  not  stale.  The 
fun  lies  in  the  idea  of  barter.  The  English- 
man has  a  title.  The  American  woman  has 
dollars.  He  lays  a  coronet  at  her  feet.  She 
hands  money  bags  to  him.  Essentially  the 
joke  is  the  same  on  whichever  side  of  the  At- 
lantic it  is  made.  But  there  is  a  slight  differ- 
ence in  the  way  the  parts  of  it  are  emphasized. 
The  tendency  among  American  humorists  is 
to  dwell  a  little  on  the  greed  of  the  English- 
man, who  is  represented  as  incapable  of  earn- 
ing money  for  himself.     The  English  jester 

[229] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

lays  more  stress  on  the  American  woman's  de- 
sire to  be  called  "my  lady,"  and  pokes  sly  fun 
at  the  true  democrat's  fondness  for  titles.  I 
appreciate  the  joke  thoroughly  wherever  it  is 
made,  and  I  invariably  laugh  heartily  at  it. 
But  I  decline  to  take  it  as  anything  more  than 
a  joke.  It  is  not  a  precise  and  scientific  ex- 
planation of  fact. 

There  are  a  great  many  marriages  between 
American  women  of  large  or  moderate  for- 
tune and  English  men,  or  other  Europeans,  of 
title.  That  is  the  fact.  No  doubt  the  dollars 
are  as  attractive  to  noblemen  as  they  are  to  any- 
body else.  There  are  a  number  of  pleasant 
things,  steam  yachts,  for  instance,  which  can 
be  got  by  those  who  have  dollars,  but  not  by 
those  who  are  without  them.  They  may  occa- 
sionally be  the  determining  factor  in  the  choice 
of  a  wife.  But  I  feel  sure  that  most  English- 
men, when  they  marry  American  women,  do 
so  because  they  like  them.  They  marry  the 
woman,  not  the  money.  In  the  same  way  a 
title  is  a  very  pleasant  thing  to  have.  I  have 
never  enjoyed  the  sensation  and  never  shall, 
[230] 


MEN   AND    HUSBANDS 

but  I  know  that  it  must  be  most  agreeable  to 
be  styled  "Your  Grace,"  or  to  have  a  coronet 
embroidered  on  a  pocket  handkerchief.  But 
I  do  not  believe  that  American  women  marry 
coronets.  They  marry  men.  The  coronet 
counts,  I  daresay,  but  the  man  counts  more. 

It  is  interesting  to  notice  that,  although 
there  are  many  marriages  between  American 
women  and  Englishmen,  there  are  compara- 
tively few  marriages  between  English  women 
and  American  men.  If  it  were  a  mere  ques- 
tion of  exchanging  money  for  titles  we  might 
expect  English  women  of  title  to  marry  Amer- 
ican men.  There  are  a  great  many  English 
women  with  titles  and  a  great  many  rich  Amer- 
ican men.  They  might  marry  each  other,  but 
they  do  not,  not,  at  all  events,  in  large  num- 
bers. It  is  true  that  the  woman  cannot,  un- 
less she  is  a  princess,  give  her  husband  a  title, 
as  a  man  can  give  a  title  to  his  wife.  But  it 
is  no  small  thing  to  have  a  wife  with  a  title. 
It  is  a  pleasure  well  worth  buying,  if  it  is  to 
be  bought.  But  apparently  it  is  not.  The 
English  woman  of  title  prefers  to  marry  an 

[231] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

English  man,  however  rich  Americans  may  be. 
The  American  man  prefers  American  women, 
though  none  of  them  have  titles.  Exact  statis- 
tics about  these  marriages  are  not  available, 
but  we  may  take  the  vitality  of  current  jokes  as 
an  indication  of  what  the  facts  are.  The  joke 
about  the  marriage  between  Miss  Sadie  K. 
Bock,  daughter  of  the  well-known  dollar  dic- 
tator of  Capernaum,  Pa.,  U.S.A.,  and  the 
Viscount  Fitzeffingham  Plantagenet,  is  fresh 
and  always  popular.  But  no  one  ever  made  a 
joke  about  a  marriage  between  the  dollar  dic- 
tator's json  and  Lady  Ermyntrude.  There 
would  be  no  point  in  that  joke  if  it  were  made 
because  the  thing  does  not  happen,  or  does  not 
happen  often  enough  to  strike  the  popular  im- 
agination. 

The  truth  appears  to  be  that  American 
women,  apart  from  any  question  of  their 
dowries,  are  attractive  both  to  English  and 
American  men.  English  men,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  attractive  both  to  English  and 
American  women. 

I  occupy  in  this  investigation  the  position 
[232] 


MEN   AND    HUSBANDS 

of  an  unprejudiced  outsider.  I  am  neither 
English  nor  American,  but  Irish,  and  I  can 
afford  to  discuss  the  matter  without  passion, 
since  Irish  women  are  admittedly  more  attrac- 
tive than  any  others  in  the  world  and  Irish! 
men  are  seldom  tempted  to  marry  outside  their 
own  people.  A  very  wise  English  lady,  one 
who  has  much  experience  of  life,  once  said 
that  young  Englishmen  of  good  position  are 
lured  into  marrying  music  hall  dancers,  a  thing 
which  occasionally  happens  to  them,  because 
they  find  these  ladies  more  entertaining  and 
exciting  than  girls  of  their  own  class.  I  do 
not  know  whether  this  is  true  or  not,  but  if  it 
is  it  helps  to  explain  the  attractiveness  of 
American  women.  There  is  always  a  certain 
unexpectedness  about  them.  They  are  always 
stimulating  and  agreeable.  It  is  much  more 
difficult  to  account  for  the  attractiveness  of  the 
English  man. 

The  manners  of  a  well-bred  English  man 
are  not  superior  to  those  of  a  well-bred  Amer- 
ican man.  Nor  are  they  inferior.  Looked  at 
superficially,  they  are  the  same.     As  far  as 

[233] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

mere  conventional  behavior  toward  women  is 
concerned,  there  is  no  difference  between  an 
Englishman  and  an  American.  A  well-man- 
nered Englishman  rises  up  and  opens  the  door 
for  a  woman  when  she  leaves  the  room.  So 
does  a  well-mannered  American.  The  Eng- 
lishman hands  tea,  bread  and  butter  or  cake 
to  a  woman  before  he  takes  tea,  bread  and  but- 
ter or  cake  for  himself.  So  does  the  Ameri- 
can. The  outward  acts  are  identical.  But 
there  is  a  subtle  difference  in  the  spirit  which 
inspires  them.  The  English  man  does  these 
things  because  he  is  chivalrous.  His  manners 
are  based  on  the  theory  "Noblesse  oblige." 
The  woman  belongs  to  the  weaker  sex,  he  to 
the  stronger.  All  courtesy  is  therefore  due  to 
her.  This  is  the  theory  which  underlies  the 
behavior  of  Englishmen  to  women.  Good 
manners  are  a  survival,  one  of  the  few  sur- 
vivals, of  the  old  idea  of  chivalry;  and  chivalry 
was  the  nobly  conceived  homage  of  the  strong 
to  the  weak,  of  the  superior  to  the  inferior. 
The  American,  performing  exactly  the  same 
outward  acts,  is  reverent.  And  reverence  is 
[234] 


MEN   AND    HUSBANDS 

essentially  the  opposite  of  chivalry.  It  is  not 
the  homage  of  the  strong  to  the  weak,  but  the 
obeisance  of  the  inferior  in  the  presence  of  a 
superior. 

This  difference  of  spirit  underlies  the  whole 
relationship  of  men  to  women  in  England  and 
America.  It  helps  to  explain  the  fact  that  the 
feminist  movement  in  England  is  much  fiercer 
than  it  is  in  America.  The  English  feminist 
is  up  against  chivalry  and  wants  equality.  The 
American  woman,  though  she  may  claim  rights, 
has  no  inducement  to  destroy  reverence. 

I  should  be  very  sorry  to  think,  I  should  be 
mad  to  say,  that  this  difference  in  spirit  has 
anything  to  do  with  the  attractiveness  of  Eng- 
lishmen, considered  not  as  temporary  compan- 
ions, but  as  husbands.  But  there  are,  or  once 
were,  people  who  held  the  theory  that  the  natu- 
ral woman — and  all  women  are  perhaps  more 
or  less  natural — prefers  as  a  husband  the  kind 
of  man  who  asserts  himself  as  her  superior. 
"O.  Henry"  has  a  story  of  a  woman  who 
learned  to  respect  and  love  her  husband  only 
after  she  had  goaded  him  into  beating  her. 

[235] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

Up  to  that  point  she  had  despised  him  thor- 
oughly. Other  novelists,  deep  students  of  hu- 
man nature  all  of  them,  have  worked  on  the 
same  scheme.  They  are  quite  wrong,  of 
course.  But  if  they  were  right  they  might 
quote  the  Englishman's  invincible  chivalry  as 
the  reason  of  his  attractiveness;  maintaining, 
cynically,  that  a  woman  prefers,  in  a  husband, 
that  kind  of  homage  to  the  reverence  that  the 
American  man  continually  offers  her. 

The  American  man  strikes  me  as  more  alert 
than  the  Englishman.  If  this  were  noticeable 
only  in  New  York,  I  should  attribute  the  alert- 
ness to  the  climate.  The  air  of  New  York  is 
extraordinarily  stimulating.  The  stranger 
feels  himself  tireless,  as  if  he  could  go  on  doing 
things  of  an  exhausting  kind  all  day  long 
without  intervals  for  rest.  It  would  be  small 
wonder  if  the  natives  of  the  place  were  eager 
beyond  other  men.  But  they  are  not  more 
eager  and  alert  than  other  Americans.  There- 
fore we  cannot  blame,  or  thank,  the  climate 
for  these  qualities.  They  must  depend  upon 
some  peculiarity  of  the  American  nervous  sys- 
[236] 


MEN   AND    HUSBANDS 

tern,  unless  indeed  they  are  the  result  of  liv- 
ing under  the  American  constitution.  A  man 
would  naturally  feel  it  his  duty  to  be  as  alert 
as  he  could  if  he  felt  that  his  country  was  pre- 
eminently the  land  of  progress  and  that  all 
the  other  countries  in  the  world  were  more  or 
less  old-fashioned  and  effete.  But  wherever 
the  alertness  comes  from  it  is  certainly  one  of 
the  characteristics  of  the  American  man. 

With  it  goes  sanguineness.  Every  man 
who  undertakes  any  enterprise  looks  at  it  from 
two  points  of  view.  He  thinks  how  very  nice 
life  will  be  if  the  enterprise  succeeds.  He  also 
considers  how  disagreeable  things  will  become 
if,  for  any  reason,  it  fails  to  come  off.  The 
Englishman,  unless  he  is  a  politician,  is  tem- 
peramentally inclined  to  give  full  weight  to 
the  possibility  of  failure.  The  American 
dwells  rather  on  the  prospects  of  success. 
There  are,  of  course,  a  great  many  sanguine 
Englishmen.  Most  Members  of  Parliament, 
for  instance,  must  be  extraordinarily  hopeful, 
otherwise  they  would  not  go  on  expecting  to 
get  things  done  by  voting  and  listening  to 

[237] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

speeches.  Some  Americans,  though  not  many, 
are  cautious  to  the  point  of  being  almost  pes- 
simistic. But,  broadly  speaking,  Americans 
are  more  sanguine  than  Englishmen.  That  is 
why  so  many  new  faiths,  and  new  foods,  come 
from  America.  Only  a  very  hopeful  people 
could  have  invented  Christian  Science  or  ex- 
pect to  be  benefited  by  eating  patent  foods 
at  breakfast  time.  That  is  also,  I  imagine, 
why  Americans  drink  so  much  iced  water. 
Conscious  of  the  dangers  of  being  too  san- 
guine, they  try  to  cool  down  their  spirits  in 
the  way  which  is  generally  recognized  as  best 
for  reducing  excessive  hopefulness.  To  pour 
cold  water  on  anything  is  a  proverbial  expres- 
sion. The  Americans  pour  gallons  of  very 
cold  water  down  their  throats,  which  shows 
that  they  are  on  the  watch  against  the  defects 
of  their  high  qualities. 

With  the  alertness  and  hopefulness  there 
goes,  inevitably,  a  certain  restlessness.  "Bet- 
ter the  devil  you  know  than  the  devil  you 
don't"  is  a  proverb  which  appeals  to  the  Eng- 
lish man.  It  could  never  be  popular  in  Amer- 
[238] 


MEN   AND    HUSBANDS 

ica.  The  American,  if  he  made  up  his  mind 
to  go  in  for  the  acquaintance  of  devils  at  all, 
would  be  inclined  to  try  the  newer  kinds,  not 
merely  because  he  would  be  hopeful  about 
them,  but  because  he  would  feel  sure  that  the 
old  ones  would  bore  him.  He  would  never 
settle  down  to  a  monotonous  cat  and  dog  life 
with  a  thoroughly  familiar  devil.  The  Eng- 
lishman prefers  to  remain  where  he  is  unless 
the  odds  are  in  favor  of  a  change  being  a 
change  for  the  better.  The  American  will 
make  a  change  unless  he  thinks  it  likely  to  be 
a  change  for  the  worse. 

We  were  greatly  struck  while  we  were  in 
America  by  the  fact  that  there  were  very  few 
gardens  there.  The  season  of  the  year,  late 
autumn,  was  not,  indeed,  favorable  to  gardens. 
Still  I  think  we  should  have  recognized  flower 
beds  and  the  remains  of  flowers  if  we  had 
seen  them.  At  first  we  were  inclined  to  think 
that  Americans  do  not  care  for  flowers;  but 
we  were  constantly  assured,  on  unimpeachable 
authority,  that  they  do.  And  we  were  not 
dependent  on  mere  assertion.     We  saw  that 

[239] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

Americans  adorn  their  rooms  with  cut  flowers, 
sometimes  at  huge  expense.  They  must  there- 
fore like  flowers.  They  also,  we  were  told, 
like  growing  them;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact 
they  do  not  grow  them  to  anything  like  the 
same  extent  that  flowers  are  grown  in  Eng- 
land or  Ireland.  We  used  to  ask  why  people 
who  like  flowers  and  would  like  to  grow  them 
have  so  few  gardens.  We  got  several  an- 
swers. The  climate,  of  course,  was  one.  But 
it  is  not  fair  to  make  the  climate  responsible 
for  too  many  things.  Besides  the  climate,  as 
I  have  said  before,  is  not  the  same  all  over 
America.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  it  is 
everywhere  fatal  to  gardening. 

Another  answer — a  much  more  satisfactory 
one — was  that  it  takes  time  to  create  a  gar- 
den, and  Americans  do  not  usually  stay  long 
enough  in  one  house  to  make  it  worth  while  to 
start  gardening.  It  is  plainly  an  unsatisfac- 
tory thing  to  inaugurate  a  herbaceous  border 
in  1914  if  you  are  likely  to  leave  it  early  in 
1915.  As  for  yew  hedges  and  delights  of 
that  kind,  no  one  plants  them  unless  he  has  a 
[240] 


MEN   AND    HUSBANDS 

good  hope  that  his  son  will  be  there  to  enjoy 
them  after  he  has  gone.  The  American,  so 
we  were  told,  and  so  of  course  believed,  is 
always  looking  forward  to  moving  into  a  new 
house.  This  is  because  he  is  alert,  sanguine 
and  a  lover  of  change.  The  Englishman  is 
inclined  to  settle  down  in  one  house,  and  it  is 
very  difficult  to  root  him  out  of  it.  Therefore 
gardens  are  commonly  possible  in  England  and 
rarely  so  in  America. 

We  did  indeed  see  some  gardens  in  America, 
and  they  were  tended  with  all  the  care  which 
flower  lovers  display  everywhere.  We  saw 
in  them  plants  brought  from  very  different 
places,  round  which  there  doubtless  gathered 
all  sorts  of  associations,  whose  blossoms  were 
redolent  with  the  perfume  of  happy  memories 
as  well  as  their  own  natural  scents.  But  these 
gardens  belonged  to  men  who  either  through 
the  necessity  of  their  particular  occupation  or 
through  some  eccentricity  of  character  felt 
that  they  were  likely  to  remain  in  one  place. 

Gardens  are  generally  best  loved  and  most 
carefully  tended  by  women.     I  have  known 

[241] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

men  who  took  a  real  interest  in  plants,  but  for 
the  most  part  men  who  spend  their  leisure 
hours  in  gardens  occupy  themselves  in  mowing 
the  grass  or  scuffling  the  walks.  They  will 
trim  the  edges  of  flowerbeds  with  shears,  they 
will  sometimes  even  dig,  but  their  hearts  are 
not  with  the  growing  plants.  Often  they  con- 
fess as  much  openly,  saying  without  shame 
that  mowing  is  capital  exercise  after  office 
hours,  or  that  the  celery  bed  must  be  properly 
trenched  if  it  is  to  come  to  perfection.  No 
one  who  works  in  this  spirit  is  a  gardener,  nor 
is  a  man  who  merely  desires  a  tidy  trimness. 
To  the  real  gardener  neatness  is  an  unimpor- 
tant detail.  It  is  better  that  a  flower  should 
grow  in  a  bed  with  ragged  edges  than  that  it 
should  wither  slowly  in  the  middle  of  the 
trimmest  of  lawns.  It  is  women,  far  oftener 
than  men,  who  possess  or  are  possessed  by  the 
instinct  for  getting  things  to  grow.  It  is 
after  all  a  sort  of  mother  instinct,  since  flowers, 
like  children,  only  respond  to  those  who  love 
them.  Probably  every  woman  who  has  the 
mother  instinct  has  the  garden  instinct  too,  and 
[242] 


MEN    AND    HUSBANDS 

most  women,  we  may  be  thankful  for  it,  are 
potentially  good  mothers. 

Perhaps  it  is  the  fact  that  he  is  content  to 
stay  still  long  enough  to  render  gardens  pos- 
sible which  makes  the  Englishman  attractive 
as  a  husband.  It  is  easy  to  understand  that 
there  is  something  very  fascinating  to  a  gar- 
den lover  in  the  prospect  of  attachment  to  one 
particular  spot.  It  is  a  great  thing  to  feel: 
"Here  I  shall  live  until  the  end  of  living  comes, 
and  then  my  sons  will  live  here  after  me.  All 
the  rockeries  I  build,  all  the  trees  I  plant,  all 
my  pergolas  and  rose  hedges  are  for  delight 
in  coming  years,  for  delight  still  in  the  years 
beyond  my  span  of  living."  This  instinct  for 
a  settled  home,  of  which  a  garden  is  the  sym- 
bol, is  surely  stronger  in  woman  than  in  any 
man.  Woman  is  after  all  the  stable  part  of 
humanity.  Man  fights,  invents,  frets,  fusses 
and  passes.  Woman  is  the  link  between  the 
generations.  Man  makes  life  possible  and 
great.  It  is  woman  who  continues  life,  hands 
it  on.  Her  nature  requires  stability.  She 
feels  after  settledness  in  the  hope  of  finding  it. 

[243] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

If  I  were  a  philosopher  I  should  pursue 
these  speculations  and  write  several  pages 
about  men  and  women  which  it  would  be  very 
difficult  for  any  one  to  understand.  But  I 
have  no  taste  for  hunting  elusive  thoughts 
among  the  shadows  of  vague  words.  I  am 
content  to  note  my  little  facts ;  that  American 
men  are  more  restless  than  Englishmen,  that 
there  are  fewer  gardens  in  America  than  in 
England,  that  most  women  like  gardens,  and 
that  there  are  more  marriages  between  Ameri- 
can women  and  Englishmen  than  between 
English  women  and  American  men. 

I  came  across  a  curious  example  of  Amer- 
-  ican  restlessness  a  little  while  ago.  There  was 
a  footman,  very  expert  in  his  business,  who 
lived  and  earned  good  wages  in  an  English 
house.  He  was  an  ambitious  footman,  and, 
though  his  wages  were  good,  he  wanted  them 
to  be  better  still.  His  opportunity  came  to 
him.  An  American  wanted  a  valet  and  was 
prepared  to  pay  very  large  wages  indeed.  The 
footman  offered  his  services,  and  being,  as  I 
said,  a  very  good  footman,  he  secured  the  va- 
[244] 


MEN   AND    HUSBANDS 

cant  position,  and  the  wages  which  were  far 
beyond  any  he  would  ever  have  earned  in 
England.  At  the  end  of  two  years  he  hap- 
pened to  meet  the  butler  under  whom  he  had 
served  in  the  English  house.  The  butler  con- 
gratulated him  on  his  great  wealth.  The  foot- 
man, now  a  valet,  replied  that  there  are  several 
things  in  the  world  better  worth  having  than 
money. 

"I  haven't,"  he  said,  "slept  a  fortnight  at  a 
time  in  the  same  bed  since  I  left  you,  and  it's 
killing  me." 

Now  that  would  not  have  killed  or  gone  near 
killing  an  American  born  footman,  if  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  an  American  born  footman. 
He  would  have  enjoyed  it,  just  as  his  master 
did;  for  that  American,  being  very  wealthy, 
could  if  he  liked  have  slept  in  the  same  bed 
every  night  for  a  year,  every  night  for  many 
years,  until  indeed  the  bed  wore  out.  He  pre- 
ferred to  vary  his  beds  as  much  as  possible. 
He  had,  no  doubt,  many  beds  which  were  in  a 
sense  his  own,  beds  in  town  houses,  beds  in 
shooting  boxes,  beds  in  fishing  lodges,  beds  in 

[245] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

Europe,  beds  which  he  had  bought  with  money 
and  to  which  he  had  an  indefeasible  title  as 
proprietor.  But  not  one  of  these  was,  as  an 
Englishman  would  understand  the  words,  his 
own  bed.  There  was  not  one  to  which  he  came 
back  after  wandering  as  to  a  familiar  resting 
place.  They  were  all  just  couches  to  sleep  on, 
to  be  occupied  for  a  night  or  two,  indistinguish- 
able from  those  which  he  hired  in  hotels. 

I  am  told  that  the  English  are  learning  the 
habit  of  restlessness  from  the  Americans,  as 
indeed  they  have  learned  many  other  things. 
If  they  learn  it  thoroughly  they  will,  I  think, 
have  to  give  up  the  hope  of  being  able  to  marry 
wealthy  American  women.  Their  titles  will 
not  purchase  desirable  brides  for  them  if  they 
are  no  longer  able  to  offer  settled  homes.  Ac- 
cording to  a  very  learned  German  historian,  it 
was  the  introduction  of  the  "stabilitas  loci" 
ideal  into  the  western  rules  which  made  mon- 
asticism  the  popular  career  it  was  in  the  church. 
It  is  his  old  fondness  for  settling  down  and 
staying  there  which  made  the  Englishman  so 
popular  as  a  husband. 
[246] 


CHAPTER   XI 

THE    OPEN    DOOR 

Americans  are  forced  by  the  restlessness  of 
their  nature  to  move  about  frequently  from 
house  to  house,  but  they  have  arranged  that 
each  temporary  abode  is  very  comfortable. 
They  are  ahead  of  the  English  in  their  domes- 
tic arrangements.  I  pay  this  tribute  to  them 
very  unwillingly,  because  I  myself  am  more 
at  my  ease  in  an  inconveniently  arranged 
house.  That  is  because  I  am  accustomed  to 
inconvenience.  The  English  houses  are  great- 
ly superior  to  the  Irish,  therefore  to  go  straight 
from  an  Irish  house  to  an  American,  from 
Connaught  to  Chicago,  is  to  plunge  oneself 
too  suddenly  into  strangely  civilized  surround- 
ings. I  admire,  but  I  fear  it  would  be  years 
before  I  could  enjoy,  an  American  house.  I 
go  to  bed  most  contentedly  in  a  bedroom  in 

[247] 


FROM  DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

which  a  single  candle  lights  a  little  circle  round 
it,  leaving  dim,  fascinating  spaces  in  which 
anything  may  lurk.  I  like  when  the  candle  is 
extinguished  to  see  a  faint  glow  of  light  from 
a  fire  reflected  on  the  ceiling.  I  find  it  pleas- 
ant to  remember,  after  I  have  got  into  bed, 
that  I  do  not  know  in  what  part  of  the  room 
I  left  the  matches,  that  if  I  awake  in  the  night 
and  want  the  light  I  must  go  on  a  dangerous 
and  exciting  quest,  feeling  my  way  toward 
the  dressing  table,  sweeping  one  thing  after 
another  off  it  while  I  pass  my  hand  along  in 
search  of  the  matchbox.  The  glare  of  the  elec- 
tric light  robs  bed-going  of  its  romance.  The 
convenient  switch  beside  my  hand  cuts  me  off 
from  all  chance  of  midnight  adventure. 

I  like  to  get  out  of  bed  on  a  frosty  morning 
and  find  myself  in  a  thoroughly  cold  room. 
The  effort  to  do  this  very  trying  thing  braces 
me  for  the  day.  I  slip  a  hand,  an  arm,  a  foot, 
from  the  blankets,  feel  the  nip  of  the  air,  draw 
them  back  again,  go  through  a  period  of  in- 
tense mental  struggle,  make  a  gallant  effort, 
fling  all  the  bedclothes  from  me  and  stand 
[248] 


THE   OPEN   DOOR 

shivering  on  the  floor.  I  feel  then  that  I  am  a 
strong,  virtuous  man,  fit  to  go  forth  and  con- 
quer. The  glow  of  righteousness  becomes  even 
more  delightful  if  I  find  a  film  of  ice  on  the 
water  of  my  jug  and  break  it  with  the  handle 
of  a  toothbrush.  All  this  is  denied  me  in  an 
American  house.  Getting  out  of  bed  there  is 
no  real  test  of  moral  courage.  The  room  is 
pleasantly  warm,  a  sponge  is  soft  and  pliable, 
not  a  frozen  stone. 

I  like,  where  this  is  still  possible,  to  have  my 
bath  in  a  large  tin  dish,  shallow  and  flat,  which 
stands  in  the  middle  of  the  bedroom  floor  with 
a  mat  under  it.  There  are  fine  old  Irish  houses 
in  which  this  delightful  way  of  bathing  still 
survives.  Alas !  they  are,  even  in  Ireland,  get- 
ting fewer  every  day.  The  next  best  thing  is 
to  wander  down  chilly  corridors  in  search  of 
the  single  bathroom  which  the  house  contains. 
This  is,  fortunately,  still  necessary  in  most 
English  and  nearly  all  Irish  houses.  Any  one 
who  is  fond  of  the  amusement  of  reading 
house  agents'  advertisements  must  have  no- 
ticed   the    English    economy    in    bathrooms. 

[249] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

"Handsome  mansion,  four  reception  rooms, 
lounge  hall,  billiard  room,  fifteen  bedrooms, 
bath,  hot  and  cold."  I  do  not  believe  that 
there  is  a  house  like  that  in  all  America.  Im- 
agine the  excitement  of  living  in  it  when  all 
the  fifteen  bedrooms  are  full.  It  stimulates 
a  man  to  feel,  as  he  sallies  forth  with  his  towel 
over  his  arm,  that  any  one  of  the  other  four- 
teen inhabitants  may  have  reached  the  bath  be- 
fore him,  that  thirteen  people  may  possibly  be 
waiting  in  a  queue  outside  the  door.  To  get 
into  the  bathroom  in  a  house  of  that  kind  at  the 
first  attempt  must  be  like  holding  a  hand  at 
bridge  with  four  aces,  four  kings,  four  queens 
and  a  knave  in  it,  a  thing  worth  living  and 
waiting  for.  In  America  all  this  is  denied  us. 
A  bathroom,  luxuriously  arranged,  adjoins 
each  bedroom.  Washing  is  made  so  ridicu- 
lously easy  that  there  ceases  to  be  any  virtue 
in  it.  No  one  would  say  in  America  that 
cleanliness  is  next  to  godliness.  There  is  no 
connection  between  the  two  things.  It  would 
be  as  sensible  to  say  that  breathing  is  a  subor- 
dinate kind  of  virtue.  In  England  a  dressing 
[250] 


THE   OPEN   DOOR 

gown  is  well-nigh  a  necessity.  I  know  a 
thoughtful  host  who  provides  one  for  his 
guests;  a  warm  voluminous  garment  in  which 
it  is  possible  to  go  comfortably  to  the  bath- 
room. In  America  a  dressing  gown,  for  a 
man,  is  a  useless  incumbrance.  I  dragged  one 
with  me,  but  I  shall  never  take  it  again;  for, 
like  many  other  things,  it  is  misnamed.  It  is 
only  when  one  has  to  stop  dressing  that  a  dress- 
ing gown  is  any  use. 

In  these  matters  of  the  heating  of  houses 
and  the  arrangement  of  baths  I  prefer  what 
I  am  accustomed  to,  but  I  know  that  I  am 
little  better  than  a  barbarian.  I  might,  if  I 
had  lived  in  the  days  when  matches  were  first 
invented,  have  sighed  for  my  flint  and  steel, 
but  I  hope  I  should  have  recognized  the  superi- 
ority of  matches.  I  might,  in  the  early  days 
of  railways,  have  wished  to  go  on  traveling  in 
stage  coaches,  but  I  should  have  known  that 
steam  engines  are  really  better  things  than 
horses  at  dragging  heavy  weights  for  long 
distances.  Thus  I  cling  to  the  romance  of  icy 
bedrooms  and  inconvenient  baths,  but  I  ac- 

[251] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

knowledge  freely  that  the  Americans  have 
found  the  better  way  and  made  a  step  for- 
ward along  the  road  of  human  progress. 

I  am  not,  however,  so  obstinately  conserva- 
tive as  to  fail  in  appreciating  some  other  points 
in  the  American  mastery  of  the  domestic  arts. 
I  may  long  for  chilly  rooms  and  remote  baths, 
but  I  thoroughly  enjoy  clean  towels.  Never 
have  I  met  so  many  clean  towels  as  in  Amer- 
ica. The  English  middle-class  housekeeper  is 
behind  her  French  sister  in  the  provision  of 
towels,  but  the  American  is  ahead  even  of 
France.  The  American  towel  is  indeed  small, 
the  bath  towel  particularly  small;  but  that 
seems  to  me  a  trifling  matter,  hardly  worth 
mentioning,  when  the  supply  is  abundant.  I 
would  rather  any  day  have  three  small  apples 
than  one  large  one,  and  my  feeling  about  tow- 
els is  the  same.  It  is  a  real  pleasure  to  find  a 
row  of  clean  ones  waiting  every  time  it  becomes 
necessary  to  wash.  It  is  certainly  a  mark  of 
superior  civilization  to  realize  the  importance 
of  house  linen  in  daily  life.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  American 
[252] 


THE    OPEN   DOOR 

fails  in  the  matter  of  sheets.  What  you  get 
are  good,  very  good,  smooth  and  cool.  You 
are  constantly  given  clean  ones.  But  they 
are  not  long  enough.  In  England  the  sheet  on 
your  bed  covers  your  feet  completely  and  leaves 
a  broad  flap  at  the  other  end  which  you  can 
turn  over  the  blankets  and  tuck  under  your 
chin.  In  America  you  must  either  leave  your 
feet  sheetless  or  be  content  with  a  mere  ribbon 
of  linen  under  your  chin,  a  narrow  strip  which 
will  certainly  wriggle  away  during  the  night. 
This  may  not  be  the  fault  of  the  American 
housekeeper.  There  may  be  some  kind  of  linen 
drapers'  trust  which  baffles  the  efforts  of  re- 
formers. I  have  heard  that  in  one  of  the 
western  states,  where  the  suffrage  has  been 
granted  to  women,  a  law  has  been  passed  that 
all  sheets  must  be  made  eighteen  inches  longer 
than  they  usually  are  in  the  other  American 
states.  That  law  is  a  strong  proof  of  the  ad- 
vantages to  the  community  of  allowing  women 
to  vote.  It  also  seems  to  show  that  the  Amer- 
ican woman,  at  all  events,  is  alive  to  the  neces- 
sity of  reform  in  this  matter  of  sheets,  and  is 

[253] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

determined  to  do  her  best  to  remedy  a  defect 
in  her  household  management. 

The  disuse  of  doors  in  those  parts  of  the 
house  which  are  inhabited  during  the  daytime 
is  a  very  interesting  feature  of  American  do- 
mestic life.  The  first  action  of  an  Englishman 
when  he  enters  a  room  is  to  shut  the  door.  His 
first  duty  when  leaving  it,  if  any  one  remains 
inside,  is  to  shut  the  door.  No  well-trained 
servant  ever  leaves  a  door  open  unless  specially 
requested  to  do  so.  Children,  from  their  very 
earliest  years,  are  taught  to  shut  doors,  and 
punished — it  is  one  of  the  few  things  for  which 
a  child  is  systematically  punished  now — for 
leaving  doors  open.  An  English  mother  calls 
after  her  child  as  he  leaves  the  room  the  single 
word  "door,"  or,  if  she  is  a  very  polite  and 
affectionate  mother,  two  words,  "door,  dear," 
or  "door,  please."  An  American  child  would 
not  understand  a  request  made  in  this  elliptical 
form.  It  knows  of  course  what  a  door  is,  just 
as  it  knows  what  a  wall  is,  but  it  would  be 
puzzled  by  the  mere  utterance  of  the  word, 
just  as  an  English  child  would  be  if  its  mother 
[254] 


THE    OPEN   DOOR 

suddenly  called  to  it,  "wall,"  or  "wall,  dear," 
or  "wall,  please."  The  American  child  would 
wonder  what  its  mother  wanted  to  say  about 
a  door.  The  English  child  understands  thor- 
oughly in  the  same  way  as  we  all  understand 
what  a  dentist  means  when  he  says,  "Open, 
please."  It  is  never  our  favorite  books,  our 
tightly  clenched  hands,  or  our  screwed  up  eyes 
which  he  wants  us  to  open,  always  our  mouths. 
The  word  "open"  is  enough  for  us.  So  the 
word  "door"  through  a  long  association  of 
ideas  at  once  suggests  to  the  English  child  the 
idea  of  shutting  it. 

An  Englishman  is  thoroughly  uncomfort- 
able in  a  room  with  the  door  open.  An  Amer- 
ican's feeling  about  shut  doors  was  very  well 
expressed  to  me  by  a  lady  who  had  been  paying 
a  number  of  visits  to  friends  in  England. 

"English  houses,"  she  said,  "always  seem  to 
me  like  hotels.  When  you  go  into  them  you 
see  nothing  except  shut  doors." 

If,  after  due  apologies,  you  ask  why  Amer- 
icans have  no  doors  between  their  sitting- 
rooms,  or  why,  when  they  have  doors,  they  do 

[255] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

not  use  them,  you  always  get  the  same  an- 
swer. 

"Doors,"  they  say,  "are  necessary  in  Eng- 
land to  keep  out  draughts,  because  the  Eng- 
lish do  not  know  how  to  heat  their  houses.  In 
our  houses  all  rooms  and  passages  are  kept 
up  to  an  even  temperature  and  we  do  not  re- 
quire doors." 

This  is  an  intelligible  but  not  the  real  ex- 
planation of  this  curious  difference  between 
the  Americans  and  the  English.  There  are 
some  English  homes  which  are  centrally  heated 
and  in  which  the  temperature  is  as  even,  though 
rarely  as  high,  as  in  American  houses ;  but  the 
Englishmen  who  live  in  them  still  shut  doors. 
An  Englishman  would  shut  the  door  of  the 
inner  chamber  of  a  Turkish  bath  if  there  were 
a  door  to  shut.  In  summer,  when  the  days 
are  very  warm,  he  opens  all  the  windows  he  can, 
but  he  does  not  sit  with  the  door  open.  Tem- 
perature has  nothing  to  do  with  his  fondness 
for  doors.  In  the  same  way  there  are  in  Amer- 
ica some  houses  which  are  not  centrally  heated, 
very  old-fashioned  houses,  but  they  are  as 
[256] 


THE   OPEN   DOOR 

doorless  as  the  others.  The  fact  seems  to  be 
not  that  doors  were  disused  when  central  heat- 
ing became  common,  but  that  central  heating 
was  invented  so  that  people  who  disliked  doors 
could  be  warm  without  them. 

I  think  the  lady  who  told  me  that  the  Eng- 
lish houses  seemed  like  hotels  to  her  hinted 
at  the  real  explanation.  The  open  door  is  a 
symbol  of  hospitality.  It  is  the  expression  of 
sociability  of  disposition.  The  Americans  are 
hospitable  and  marvelously  sociable.  They 
naturally  like  to  live  among  open  doors  or  with 
no  doors  at  all,  so  that  any  one  can  walk  up 
to  him  and  speak  to  him  without  difficulty. 
The  Englishman,  on  the  other  hand,  wants  to 
keep  other  people  away  from  him,  even  mem- 
bers of  his  own  family.  His  dearest  desire  is 
to  have  some  room  of  his  own  into  which  he 
can  shut  himself,  where  no  one  has  a  right  to 
intrude.  He  calls  it  his  "den,"  which  means 
the  lurking  place  of  a  morose  and  solitary  ani- 
mal. Rabbits,  which  are  sociable  creatures, 
live  in  burrows.  Bees,  which  have  perfected 
the  art  of  life  in  community,  have  hives.    The 

[257] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

bear  has  its  den.  Every  room  in  an  old- 
fashioned  English  middle-class  house  is  really 
a  den,  though  sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
drawing-room,  a  den  which  is  meant  for  the 
use  of  several  beasts  of  the  same  kind  at  once. 
A  change  is  indeed  coming  slowly  over  Eng- 
lish life  in  this  matter.  The  introduction  into 
the  middle  classes  of  what  is  called  by  house 
agents  "the  lounge  hall"  is  a  departure  from 
the  "den"  theory  of  domestic  life.  The  "lounge 
hall"  is  properly  speaking  a  public  room.  It 
is  available  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and  no  one 
claims  it  specially  as  his  own.  It  is  accessible 
at  once  to  the  stranger  who  comes  into  the 
house  from  the  street.  It  is  still  rare  in  Eng- 
land, but  where  it  exists  it  marks  an  approach 
toward  American  ideals.  The  term  "living- 
room"  only  lately  introduced  by  architects  into 
descriptions  of  English  houses  is  another  sign 
that  we  are  becoming  more  sociable  than  we 
were.  It  is  not  simply  another  name  for  a 
drawing-room.  It  stands  for  a  new  idea,  an 
American  idea.  The  drawing-room — properly 
the  withdrawing-room — is  for  the  use  of  peo- 
[258] 


THE    OPEN   DOOR 

pie  who  want  to  escape  temporarily  from  fam- 
ily life.  The  living-room  for  those  who  live  it 
to  the  full. 

In  the  American  house  there  are  no  "dens." 
The  American  likes  to  feel  that  he  is  in  direct 
personal  contact  with  the  members  of  his  fam- 
ily and  with  his  guest.  It  does  not  annoy  him, 
even  if  he  happen  to  be  reading  a  book  on 
economics,  to  feel  that  his  wife  may  sit  down 
beside  him  or  his  daughter  walk  past  the  back 
of  his  chair  humming  a  tune  without  his  having 
had  any  warning  that  either  of  them  was  at 
hand.  The  noise  made  by  a  servant  collecting 
knives  and  plates  after  dinner,  reaching  him 
through  a  drawn  curtain,  does  not  disturb  his 
enjoyment  of  a  cigar.  The  servant  is  to  him 
a  fellow  human  being,  and  the  sound  of  her 
activities  is  a  pleasant  reminder  of  the  com- 
radeship of  man.  He  too  has  had  his  mo- 
ments of  activity  during  the  day.  A  guest  in 
an  American  house  is  for  the  time  being  a 
member  of  the  family,  not  a  stranger  who, 
however  welcome  he  may  be,  does  not  pre- 
sume to  intrude  upon  his  host's  privacy. 

[259] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

The  "porch,"  as  it  is  called,  a  striking  fea- 
ture of  the  American  house,  is  another  evi- 
dence of  the  spirit  of  sociability.  A  "porch" 
is  a  glorified  and  perfected  veranda.  In  sum- 
mer it  is  a  large  open-air  sitting-room.  In 
winter  it  can,  by  a  common  arrangement,  be 
made  into  a  kind  of  sun  parlor.  It  has  its 
roof,  supported  by  wooden  posts.  When  the 
cold  weather  comes,  frames,  like  very  large 
window  sashes,  are  fitted  between  the  posts 
and  a  glass-sided  room  is  made.  It  is  evident 
that  the  life  in  these  porches  is  of  a  very  public 
kind.  The  passer-by,  the  casual  wanderer 
along  the  road  outside,  sees  the  American  fam- 
ily in  its  porch,  can,  if  he  cares  to,  note  what 
each  member  of  the  family  is  doing.  The 
American  has  no  objection  to  this  publicity. 
He  is  not  doing  anything  of  which  he  is  the 
least  ashamed.  If  other  people  can  see  him, 
he  can  see  them  in  return.  The  arrangement 
gratifies  his  instinct  for  sociability.  The  Eng- 
lishman, on  the  other  hand,  hates  to  be  seen. 
Nothing  would  induce  him  to  make  a  habit  of 
sitting  in  a  veranda.  Even  in  the  depths  of  the 
[260] 


THE   OPEN   DOOR 

country,  when  his  house  is  a  long  way  from 
the  road,  he  fits  thin  muslin  curtains  across  the 
lower  part  of  his  windows.  These  keep  out  a 
good  deal  of  light  and  in  that  way  are  annoy- 
ing to  him,  but  he  puts  up  with  gloom  rather 
than  run  any  risk,  however  small,  that  a 
stranger,  glancing  through  the  window,  might 
actually  see  him.  Yet  the  Englishman  com- 
monly leads  a  blameless  life  in  his  own  home. 
He  seldom  employs  his  leisure  in  any  shame- 
ful practices.  His  casement  curtains  are 
simply  evidences  of  an  almost  morbid  love  of 
privacy. 

The  first  thing  an  Englishman  does  when 
he  builds  a  house  is  to  surround  it  with  a  high 
wall.  This,  indeed,  is  not  an  English  peculiar- 
ity. It  prevails  all  over  western  Europe.  It 
is  a  most  anti-social  custom  and  ought  to  be 
suppressed  by  law,  because  it  robs  many 
people  of  a  great  deal  of  innocent  pleasure. 
The  suburbs  of  Dublin,  to  take  an  example, 
ought  to  be  very  beautiful.  There  are  moun- 
tains to  the  south  and  hills  to  the  west  and 
north  of  the  city,  all  of  them  lovely  in  out- 

[261] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

line  and  coloring.  There  is  a  wide  and  beau- 
tiful bay  on  the  east.  But  the  casual  way- 
farer cannot  see  either  the  mountains  or  the 
bay.  He  must  walk  between  high  yellow 
walls,  walls  built,  I  suppose,  round  houses ;  but 
we  can  only  know  this  by  hearsay.  For  the 
walls  hide  the  houses  as  well  as  the  view.  In 
Sorrento,  which  is  even  more  exquisitely  situ- 
ated than  Dublin,  you  walk  for  miles  and  miles 
between  high  walls,  white  in  this  case.  The 
only  difference  between  the  view  you  see  at 
Dublin  and  that  which  you  see  at  Sorrento 
is  that  the  patch  of  sky  you  see  in  Dublin  is 
gray,  at  Sorrento  generally  blue.  At  Cintra, 
one  of  the  world's  most  famous  beauty  spots, 
the  walls  are  gray,  and  there  you  cannot  even 
see  the  sky,  because  the  owners  of  the  houses 
inside  the  walls  have  planted  trees  and  the 
branches  of  the  trees  meet  over  the  road.  The 
Americans  do  not  build  walls  round  their 
houses.  The  humblest  pedestrian,  going  afoot 
through  the  suburbs  of  Philadelphia,  Indian- 
apolis or  any  other  city,  sees  not  only  the 
[262] 


THE    OPEN   DOOR 

houses  but  anything  in  the  way  of  a  view  which 
lies  beyond  them. 

This  is  not  because  America  is  a  republic 
and  therefore  democratic  in  spirit.  Portugal 
is  a  republic  too,  having  very  vigorously  got 
rid  of  its  king,  but  the  walls  of  Cintra  are  as 
high  as  ever.  No  one  in  the  world  is  more 
democratic  than  an  English  Liberal,  but  the 
most  uncompromising  Liberals  build  walls 
round  their  houses  as  high  as  those  of  any 
Tory.  The  absence  of  walls  in  America  is 
simply  another  evidence  of  the  wonderful  so- 
ciability of  the  people.  Walls  outside  houses 
are  like  doors  inside.  The  European  likes  both 
because  the  desire  of  privacy  is  in  his  blood. 
The  American  likes  neither. 

The  "Country  Club"  is  an  institution  which 
could  flourish  only  among  a  very  sociable 
people.  There  are  of  course  clubs  of  many 
sorts  in  England.  There  is  the  club  proper, 
the  club  without  qualification,  which  is  found 
at  its  very  best  in  London.  In  books  like 
Whitaker's  Almanac,  which  classify  clubs,  it 
is  described  as  "social,"  but  this  is  only  in- 

[263] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

tended  to  distinguish  it  from  political  or  sport- 
ing clubs.  There  is  no  suggestion  that  it  is 
sociable,  and  in  fact  it  is  not.  It  is  possible 
to  belong  to  a  club  in  London  for  years  with- 
out knowing  a  dozen  of  your  fellow  members. 
It  often  seems  as  if  the  members  of  these  clubs 
went  to  them  mainly  for  the  purpose  of  not 
getting  to  know  each  other;  a  misfortune 
which  might  happen  to  them  anywhere  else, 
but  from  which  they  are  secure  in  their  clubs. 
There  are  also  all  over  England  clubs  specially 
devoted  to  particular  objects,  golf  clubs, 
yacht  clubs  and  so  forth.  In  these  the  mem- 
bers are  drawn  together  by  their  interest  in  a 
common  pursuit,  and  are  forced  into  some  sort 
of  acquaintanceship.  But  these  are  very  dif- 
ferent in  spirit  and  intention  from  the  Amer- 
ican Country  Club.  It  exists  as  a  kind  of 
center  of  the  social  life  of  the  neighborhood. 
There  may  be  and  often  are  golf  links  con- 
nected with  it.  There  are  tennis  courts,  some- 
times swimming  baths.  There  is  always  a  ball- 
room. There  are  luncheon  rooms,  tea  rooms, 
reading  rooms.  In  connection  with  one  such 
[264] 


THE    OPEN   DOOR 

club  which  I  saw  there  are  sailing  matches  for  a 
one  design  class  of  boats.  But  neither  golf 
nor  tennis,  dancing  nor  sailing,  is  the  object 
of  the  club's  existence.  Sport  is  encouraged 
by  these  clubs  for  the  sake  of  general  sociabil- 
ity. In  England  sociability  is  a  by-product 
of  an  interest  in  sport. 

The  Country  Club  at  Tuxedo  is  not  per- 
haps the  oldest,  but  it  is  one  of  the  oldest  in- 
stitutions of  the  kind  in  America.  In  connec- 
tion with  it  a  man  can  enjoy  almost  any  kind 
of  recreation  from  a  Turkish  bath  to  a  game 
of  tennis,  either  the  lawn  or  the  far  rarer  or- 
iginal kind.  At  the  proper  time  of  year  there 
are  dances,  and  a  debutante  acquires,  I  be- 
lieve, a  certain  prestige  by  "coming  out"  at  one 
of  them.  But  the  club  exists  primarily  as  the 
social  center  of  Tuxedo.  It  is  in  one  way 
the  ideal,  the  perfect  country  club.  It  not  only 
fosters,  it  regulates  and  governs  the  social  life 
of  the  place. 

Tuxedo  has  been  spoken  of  as  a  million- 
aire's colony.  It  is  a  settlement,  if  not  of  mil- 
lionaires, at  all  events  of  wealthy  people.    The 

[265] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

park,  an  immense  tract  of  land,  is  owned  by 
the  club.  Ground  for  building  can  be  obtained 
only  by  those  who  are  elected  members  of  the 
club  and  who  are  prepared  to  spend  a  certain 
sum  as  a  minimum  on  the  building  of  their 
houses.  In  theory  the  place  is  reserved  for 
people  who  either  do  or  will  know  each  other 
socially,  who  are  approximately  on  the  same 
level  as  regards  wealth  and  who  all  want  to 
meet  each  other  frequently,  for  one  purpose 
or  another,  in  the  club.  In  practice,  certain 
difficulties  necessarily  arise.  A  man  may  be 
elected  a  member  of  the  club  and  build  a  house. 
He  may  be  a  thoroughly  desirable  person,  but 
in  course  of  time  he  dies.  His  son  may  be 
very  undesirable,  or  his  son  may  sell  the  house 
to  some  one  whom  the  club  is  not  willing  to  ad- 
mit to  membership.  But  Tuxedo  society,  in- 
stead of  becoming,  as  might  have  been  ex- 
pected, a  very  narrow  clique,  seems  to  be  singu- 
larly broad  minded  and  tolerant.  The  diffi- 
culty of  preserving  the  character  of  the  place 
and  keeping  a  large  society  together  as,  in  all 
its  essentials,  a  club,  is  very  much  less  than 
[266] 


THE    OPEN   DOOR 

might  be  expected.  The  place  is  extremely- 
interesting  to  any  observer  of  American  social 
life.  The  club  regulates  everything.  It  runs 
a  private  police  force  for  the  park.  It  keeps 
up  roads.  It  supplies  electric  light  and,  what 
is  hardly  less  necessary  in  America,  ice  to  all 
the  houses.  It  levies,  though  I  suppose  with- 
out any  actual  legal  warrant,  regular  rates. 
The  fact  that  the  experiment  was  not  wrecked 
long  ago  on  the  rocks  of  snobbery  goes  to 
show  that  society  in  America  is  singularly  fluid 
compared  to  that  of  any  European  country. 
That  a  considerable  number  of  people  should 
want  to  live  together  in  such  a  way  is  a  wit- 
ness to  the  sociability  of  America.  No  other 
country  club  has  realized  its  ideal  as  the  club 
at  Tuxedo  has,  but  every  country  club — and 
you  find  them  all  over  America — has  some- 
thing of  the  spirit  of  Tuxedo. 

Tuxedo  is  immensely  interesting  in  another 
way.  Nowhere  else  in  the  world,  I  suppose,  is 
it  possible  to  see  so  many  different  kinds  of 
domestic  architecture  gathered  together  in  a 
comparatively  small  space.    A  walk  round  the 

[267] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

shores  of  the  lake  gives  you  an  opportunity  of 
seeing*  houses  built  in  the  dignified  and  spacious 
colonial  style,  a  happy  modification  of  the 
English  Georgian.  Beside  one  of  these,  close 
to  it,  may  be  a  house  like  that  of  a  Mexican 
rancher,  and  the  hill  behind  is  crowned  with  a 
French  chateau.  There  are  houses  which  must 
have  had  Italian  models,  others  which  suggest 
memories  of  Tudor  manor  houses,  others  built 
after  the  fashion  of  Queen  Anne's  time.  There 
are  houses  whose  architects  evidently  had  an 
eclectic  appreciation  of  all  the  houses  built 
anywhere  or  at  any  time,  who  had  tried  to  em- 
body the  most  desirable  features  of  very  vari- 
ous styles  in  one  building.  The  general  effect 
of  a  view  of  Tuxedo  is  exceedingly  bewilder- 
ing at  first,  but  almost  every  house  is  the  ex- 
pression of  some  individual  tastes,  either  good 
or  bad.  An  architect  may  start,  apparently 
very  often  does  start,  with  the  idea  of  building 
a  house  with  twelve  rooms  in  it  at  a  cost  of 
four  thousand  pounds.  Having  thus  settled 
size  and  price,  he  may  go  ahead,  trusting  to 
luck  about  the  appearance.  Or  an  architect 
[268] 


THE    OPEN   DOOR 

may  start  with  the  idea  of  building  a  house  in 
a  certain  style,  or  to  express  some  feeling,  dig- 
nity, homeliness,  grandeur,  or  anything  else. 
The  architects  who  built  the  Tuxedo  houses  all 
seem  to  have  gone  to  work  on  the  latter  plan. 
If  the  Tuxedo  experiment  in  social  life  fails 
and  the  club  goes  into  liquidation,  the  United 
States  Government  might  do  worse  than  buy 
the  whole  place  as  it  stands  and  turn  it  into  a 
college  of  domestic  architecture.  The  stu- 
dents could,  without  traveling  more  than  a 
mile  or  two,  study  every  known  kind  of  coun- 
try house.  But,  indeed,  a  college  of  this  sort 
seems  less  needed  in  America  than  anywhere 
else.  It  is  not  only  the  insides  of  the  houses 
which  are  well  planned.  The  outsides  of  the 
newer  houses  are  for  the  most  part  beautiful 
to  look  at.  And  one  can  see  them,  there  being 
no  walls. 


[269] 


CHAPTER   XII 

COLLEGES    AND     STUDENTS 

The  municipal  elections  in  New  York  which 
resulted  in  the  defeat  of  Tammany  were 
fought  out  with  great  vigor  in  all  the  usual 
ways.  There  were  speeches,  bands  and  flags. 
The  newspapers  were  full  of  the  sayings  of 
the  different  candidates,  and  the  leader  writers 
of  each  party  seemed  to  be  highly  successful 
in  cornering  the  speakers  of  the  other  party. 
It  was  shown  clearly  every  day  that  orators 
shamelessly  contradicted  themselves,  went  back 
on  their  own  principles,  and  must,  if  they  had 
any  respect  for  logic  or  decency,  either  retract 
their  latest  remarks  or  explain  them.  All  this 
was  very  interesting  to  us.  It  would  have  been 
interesting  to  any  one.  It  was  particularly 
interesting  to  us  because  it  was  almost  new  to 
us.  Elections  are,  I  suppose,  fought  in  more 
[270] 


COLLEGES   AND    STUDENTS 

or  less  the  same  way  everywhere;  but  in  Con- 
naught  we  hardly  ever  have  elections.  An  in- 
dependent candidate  bubbles  up  occasionally, 
but  as  a  rule  we  are  content  to  return  to  Par- 
liament the  proper  man,  that  is  to  say  the 
man  whom  somebody,  we  never  quite  know 
who,  says  we  ought  to  return. 

I  gathered  the  impression  that  elections  must 
be  an  exciting  sport  for  those  engaged  in  them. 
I  do  not  think  that  the  "pomp  and  circum- 
stance" of  the  business,  the  outward  manifes- 
tations of  activity,  can  make  much  difference 
to  the  result.  Speeches,  for  instance,  are  cer- 
tainly thrilling  things  to  make,  and  I  can  un- 
derstand how  it  is  that  orators  welcome  elec- 
tions as  heaven  sent  opportunities  for  the  ex- 
ercise of  their  art.  But  the  people  who  listen 
to  the  speeches  always  seem  to  have  their  minds 
made  up  beforehand  whether  they  agree  with 
the  speaker  or  not.  They  know  what  he  is 
going  to  say  and  are  prepared  with  hoots  or 
cheers.  I  never  heard  of  any  one  who  came  to 
hoot  remaining  to  cheer.  I  doubt  whether 
there  is  a  single  modern  instance  of  a  speech 

[271] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

having  affected  the  destiny  of  a  vote.  A  very- 
good  speech  might  indeed  produce  some  effect 
if  it  were  not  that  there  is  always  an  equally 
good  speech  made  at  the  same  time  on  the  other 
side.  Election  speeches  are  like  tug  boats  pull- 
ing different  ways  at  the  opposite  ends  of  a 
large  ship.  They  neutralize  each  other  and 
the  ship  drifts  gently,  sideways,  with  the  tide. 
It  cannot  be  seriously  maintained  that  bands 
or  flags  help  voters  to  make  up  their  minds. 
In  nine  cases  out  of  ten  it  is  impossible  to  tell 
for  which  side  a  band  is  playing,  and  there- 
fore unlikely  that  it  will  draw  voters  to  one 
side  rather  than  the  other.  In  the  tenth  case, 
when  the  band,  by  selecting  some  particular 
tune,  makes  its  meaning  clear,  the  music  is  not 
of  a  quality  which  moves  the  listener  to  any 
feeling  of  gratitude  to  the  candidate  who  pays 
for  it.  I  should,  I  think,  feel  bound  to  vote 
for  a  man  who  gave  me  "panem  et  circenses" 
but  I  should  expect  good  bread  and  an  attrac- 
tive circus.  I  should  not  dream  of  voting  for 
a  candidate  wTho  provided  me  with  inferior 
music.  The  flags  are  a  real  addition  to  the 
[272] 


COLLEGES   AND    STUDENTS 

gaiety  of  city  life.  The  ordinary  elector  loves 
to  see  them  fluttering  about.  But  the  ordinary 
elector  is  not  by  any  means  a  fool.  He  knows 
that  the  flags  will  be  taken  down  very  soon 
after  the  election  is  over.  If  any  candidate 
promised  to  keep  his  flags  flying  as  a  perma- 
nent decoration  of  the  city  streets  he  might 
capture  a  few  votes.  But  we  all  know  that 
none  of  them  will  do  anything  as  useful  as 
that. 

Nor  do  I  think  that  the  editors  of  news- 
papers produce  much  effect  by  showing  up 
the  inconsistencies  of  politicians  and  pinning 
them  down  to-day,  when  they  are  driven  to 
say  something  quite  different,  to  the  things 
which,  under  stress  of  other  circumstances, 
they  said  yesterday.  It  does  not  take  a  clever 
man,  like  a  newspaper  editor,  to  corner  a  poli- 
tician. Any  fool  can  do  that,  and  the  per- 
formance of  an  obviously  easy  trick  does  not 
move  an  audience  at  all.  An  acrobat  who 
merely  hops  across  the  stage  on  one  leg  gets 
no  applause  and  the  box  office  returns  fall 
away.    The  thing  is  too  easy.    It  is  the  man 

[273] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

who  does  something  really  hard,  balances  him- 
self on  the  end  of  an  umbrella  and  juggles 
with  twenty  balls  at  once,  who  attracts  the 
public.  If  a  newspaper  editor  at  an  election 
time  would,  instead  of  showing  up  the  other 
side,  offer  proofs  that  the  men  on  his  own 
side  are  consistent,  logical  and  high-principled, 
he  would  have  enormous  influence  with  the  vot- 
ers. "Any  one,"  so  the  ordinary  man  would 
reason,  "who  can  prove  things  like  that  about 
politicians  must  be  amazingly  clever.  If  he  is 
amazingly  clever,  far  cleverer  than  I  ever  hope 
to  be,  then  there  is  a  strong  probability  that 
his  side  is  the  right  one.  I  shall  vote  for  it." 
The  ordinary  man,  so  we  ought  to  recollect,  is 
not  nearly  such  a  fool  as  is  generally  supposed. 
He  is  quite  capable  of  reasoning,  and  he  would 
reason,  I  am  sure,  just  in  the  way  I  have  sug- 
gested, if  he  were  given  a  chance. 

The  keen  interest  which  we  took  in  the 
showy  side  of  electioneering  made  us  diligent 
readers  of  the  newspapers.  We  were  rewarded 
beyond  our  hopes.  We  came  across,  on  the 
very  evening  of  the  election  itself,  a  little  para- 
[274] 


COLLEGES   AND    STUDENTS 

graph,  tucked  away  in  a  corner,  which  we 
might  very  easily  have  missed  if  we  had  been 
less  earnest  students.  In  a  certain  district  in 
New  York,  so  this  paragraph  told  us,  there 
was  a  queue  of  voters  waiting  outside  a  poll- 
ing station.  Among  them  was  a  man  who  was 
known  to  be  or  was  suspected  o;f  being  hostile 
to  Tammany.  It  was  likely  that  he  would  cast 
his  vote  on  the  other  side.  There  were,  look- 
ing thoughtfully  at  the  queue,  certain  men 
described  by  the  newspaper  as  "gangsters"  in 
the  pay  of  the  Tammany  organization.  They 
seized  the  voter  whose  principles  seemed  to 
them  objectionable  and  dragged  him  out  of 
the  queue,  plainly  in  order  to  prevent  his  re- 
cording his  vote.  So  far  there  was  nothing  of 
very  special  interest  in  the  paragraph.  We 
knew  beforehand — even  in  Ireland  we  know 
this — that  voters  are  a  good  deal  influenced 
by  the  strength  of  the  party  machine.  The 
strength  is  seldom  displayed  in  its  nakedly 
physical  form  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  but 
it  is  always  there  and  is  really  the  determining 
force  in  most  elections.    It  was  the  thing  which 

[275] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

happened  next  which  gave  the  incident  its 
value.  A  university  student  who  happened  to 
be  engaged  in  social  work  in  the  neighborhood 
saw  what  was  done.  He  was  one  man  and 
there  were  several  "gangsters,"  but  he  attacked 
them  at  once.  He  was,  as  might  be  supposed, 
as  he  himself  must  surely  have  foreseen, 
worsted  in  the  fray  which  followed.  The 
gangsters,  after  the  manner  of  their  kind, 
mauled,  beat  and  kicked  him  to  such  an  extent 
that  he  had  to  be  carried  to  a  hospital.  It  did 
not  appear  that  this  university  student  was  a 
party  man,  eager  for  the  triumph  of  his  side 
as  the  gangsters  were  for  the  victory  of  theirs. 
He  seems  to  have  acted  on  the  simple  principle 
that  a  man  who  has  a  right  to  vote  ought  not 
to  be  interfered  with  in  the  exercise  of  that 
right.  He  was  on  the  side  of  justice  and  lib- 
erty. He  was  not  concerned  with  politics  of 
either  kind. 

I  do  not  know  what  happened  to  that  stu- 
dent afterwards.     I  searched  the  papers  in 
vain  for  any  further  reference  to  the  incident. 
I  wanted  to  know  whether  the  voter  voted  in 
[276] 


COLLEGES   AND    STUDENTS 

the  end.  I  wanted  to  know  what  was  done  to 
the  gangsters.  I  wanted  to  know  whether  the 
student  recovered  from  his  injuries  or  not.  I 
wanted,  above  all,  to  know  whether  anyone 
recognized  how  fine  a  thing  that  student  did. 
I  never  discovered  another  paragraph  about 
the  incident. 

I  was  talking  some  time  afterwards  to  an 
English  friend,  the  friend  to  whom  I  have  al- 
ready referred,  who  knows  America  very  well 
and  who  offered  to  take  care  of  me  while  I  was 
there.  I  told  him  the  story  of  the  voter  and 
the  Tammany  gangsters. 

"These  things,"  he  said,  "happen  over  here. 
They  are  constantly  happening.  One  gets  into 
the  way  of  not  being  shocked  by  them.  But 
there  always  is  that  university  student  some- 
where round,  when  they  do  happen." 

It  is  an  amazingly  high  tribute  to  the  Amer- 
ican universities.  If  my  friend  is  right,  if 
blatant  force  and  abominable  injustice  do  in- 
deed find  themselves  faced,  always  and  as  a 
matter  of  course,  by  a  university  student,  then 
the  universities  are  doing  a  very  splendid  work. 

[277] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

And  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  my  friend  is 
right.  There  is  another  story  of  the  same 
kind,  one  of  many  which  might  be  told.  This 
one  came  to  me,  not  in  a  newspaper  but  from 
the  lips  of  a  man  who  told  me  that  he  was  a 
witness  of  what  happened. 

There  was — I  forget  where — a  kind  of  set- 
tlement, half  camp,  half  town,  built  in  a  lonely 
place  for  the  workmen  of  a  company  which 
was  conducting  some  mining  or  engineering 
enterprise.  The  town,  if  I  am  to  call  it  a 
town,  was  owned  and  ruled  by  the  company. 
The  workmen  were  of  various  nationalities, 
and,  taken  as  a  whole,  a  rough  lot.  It  was,  no 
doubt,  difficult  to  keep  them  contented,  diffi- 
cult enough  to  keep  them  at  all  in  such  a  place. 
It  would  probably  be  unjust  to  say  that  the 
company  encouraged  immorality;  but  the  ex- 
istence of  disorderly  houses  in  the  place  was 
winked  at.  The  men  wanted  them.  The  offi- 
cials of  the  company,  we  may  suppose,  found 
their  line  of  least  resistance  in  ignoring  an  evil 
which  they  may  have  felt  they  could  not  cure. 
After  a  while,  during  one  summer  vacation, 
[278] 


COLLEGES   AND    STUDENTS 

there  came  to  the  place  a  university  student. 
He  was  not  a  miner  or  an  engineer  and  had  no 
particular  business  with  the  company.  He 
was,  apparently,  on  a  kind  of  mission;  but 
whether  he  was  preaching  Christianity  or  social 
reform  of  a  general  kind  I  was  not  told.  He 
was  the  inevitable  university  student  of  my 
friend's  remark. 

He  found  himself  face  to  face  with  an  evil 
thing  which  he  at  all  events  would  not  ignore. 
He  made  his  protest.  Now  no  man  of  the 
world,  certainly  no  business  man,  objects  to  a 
proper  protest,  temperately  made,  provided  the 
protester  does  not  go  too  far.  The  man  of  the 
world  is  tolerant.  He  is  a  consistent  believer 
in  the  policy  of  living  and  letting  live.  He 
recognizes  that  people  with  principles  must  be 
allowed  to  state  them.  It  is  in  order  to  be 
stated  that  principles  exist.  But  he  holds  that 
in  common  fairness  he  ought  to  be  allowed  to 
ignore  these  statements  of  principle.  That 
was  just  what  this  university  student  could  not 
understand.  He  went  on  protesting  more  and 
more  forcibly  until  he  made  the  officials  un- 

[279] 


FROM  DUBLIN  TO   CHICAGO 

comfortable  and  the  men  exceedingly  angry. 
It  was  the  men,  either  with,  or,  as  I  hope,  with- 
out the  knowledge  of  their  superiors,  who  first 
threatened,  then  beat  that  university  student, 
beat  him  on  the  head  with  a  sandbag  and  finally 
drove  him  from  the  place  with  a  warning  that 
he  had  better  not  return  again. 

He  did  return,  bringing  with  him  certain 
officers  of  the  law.  He  was  a  man  of  some 
strength  of  character  and  the  recollection  of 
the  beating  did  not  cause  him  to  hesitate.  Un- 
fortunately the  officers  of  the  law  could  not 
do  much.  The  disorderly  houses  were  all  quite 
orderly  when  they  appeared.  They  were  small 
shops  selling  apples,  matches  and  other  inno- 
cent things.  There  was  no  evidence  to  be  got 
that  anything  worse  had  ever  gone  on  in  them 
than  the  sale  of  apples  and  matches.  The 
previous  inhabitants  of  these  houses  were  pic- 
nicking in  the  woods  for  a  few  days.  All  that 
the  officers  of  the  law  were  able  to  do  was  to 
conduct  the  university  student  safely  out  of  the 
place.    That  was  difficult  enough. 

I  am  not  sure  that  this  story  is  true,  for  I 
[280] 


COLLEGES   AND    STUDENTS 

did  not  read  it  in  a  newspaper;  but  it  is  very 
like  several  others  which  I  heard.  They  may 
all  be  false  or  very  greatly  exaggerated,  but 
they  show,  at  least,  the  existence  of  a  popular 
myth  in  which  the  university  student  figures, 
always  with  the  same  kind  of  character.  Be- 
hind every  myth  there  is  some  reality.  Even 
solar  myths,  the  vaguest  myths  there  are,  lead 
back  ultimately  to  the  sun,  which  is  indubi- 
tably there.  It  seems  to  me  that  whether  he 
actually  does  these  fine  things  or  not  the  Amer- 
ican university  student  has  succeeded  in  im- 
pressing the  public  with  the  idea  that  he  is  the 
kind  of  man  who  might  do  them.  That  in  it- 
self is  no  small  achievement. 

I  wanted  very  much,  because  of  the  myth 
and  for  other  reasons,  to  see  something  of 
American  university  life.  I  did  see  something, 
a  little  of  it,  both  at  Yale  and  Princeton. 

I  have  heard  it  said  that  the  Englishman  is 
more  attached  to  his  school  than  to  his  univer- 
sity, that  in  after  life  he  will  think  of  himself 
as  belonging  to  Eton,  to  Harrow,  to  Winches- 
ter, rather  than  to  Oxford  or  to  Cambridge. 

[281] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

The  school,  for  some  reason,  rather  than  the 
university,  is  regarded  as  "the  mother"  from 
whom  the  life  of  the  man's  soul  flowed,  to 
whom  his  affection  turns.  An  Oxford  man  or 
a  Cambridge  man  is  indeed  all  his  life  long 
proud,  as  he  very  well  may  be,  of  his  connec- 
tion with  his  university,  but  his  school  is  the 
subject  of  his  deepest  feeling.  Round  it 
rather  than  the  university  gathers  that  emotion 
which  for  want  of  better  words  may  be  de- 
scribed as  educational  patriotism.  An  Irish- 
man, on  the  other  hand,  if  he  is  a  graduate  of 
Dublin  University,  thinks  more  of  "Trinity" 
than  he  does  of  his  school.  He  may  have  been 
at  one  of  the  most  famous  English  public 
schools,  but  his  university,  to  a  considerable 
extent,  obliterates  the  memories  of  it.  He 
thinks  of  himself  through  life  as  a  T.  C.  D. 
man. 

America  is  like  Ireland  in  this  respect.  I 
find,  looking  back  on  my  memories  of  the 
American  men  whom  I  met  most  frequently, 
that  I  know  about  several  of  them  whether  they 
are  Yale  men,  Princeton  men  or  Harvard  men. 
[282] 


COLLEGES   AND    STUDENTS 

I  do  not  know  about  any  single  one  of  them 
what  school  they  belonged  to.  I  never  asked 
any  questions  on  the  subject.  Such  informa- 
tion as  I  got  came  to  me  accidentally.  It  came 
to  me  without  my  knowing  that  I  was  getting 
it.  Only  afterwards  did  I  realize  that  I  knew 
A.  to  be  a  Yale  man,  B.  to  be  a  Harvard  man 
and  so  forth.  In  England  the  information 
which  comes  unsought  about  a  man  concerns 
his  school  rather  than  his  university.  It  is  the 
name  of  his  school  which  drops  from  his  lips 
when  he  begins  talking  about  old  days.  There 
are  oftener  books  about  his  school  than  about 
his  university  on  his  shelves,  photographs  of 
his  school  on  the  walls  of  his  study. 

I  do  not  know  that  there  is  in  the  American 
universities  any  definitely  planned  and  delib- 
erate effort  to  create  or  foster  this  spirit  of 
patriotism.  There  is  certainly  no  such  effort 
apparent  in  Dublin  University.  The  spirit  is 
there.  That  is  all  that  can  be  said.  It  pervades 
these  institutions.  Only  an  occasional  and 
more  or  less  eccentric  undergraduate  escapes 
its  influence. 

[283] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

The  patriotism  is  indeed  much  more  obvious 
and  vocal  in  America  than  in  Dublin.  We  had 
the  good  luck  to  be  present  at  a  football  match 
between  Yale  and  Colgate  Universities.  It 
was  not  a  match  of  first-rate  importance,  but 
an  enormous  crowd  of  spectators  gathered  to 
witness  it.  The  excitement  of  the  supporters 
of  both  sides  was  intense.  There  was  no  pos- 
sible mistake  about  the  fact  that  professors 
and  undergraduates,  old  men  who  had  gradu- 
ated long  ago  and  boys  who  were  not  yet 
undergraduates,  wives,  mothers  and  sisters  of 
graduates  and  undergraduates,  were  all  eager- 
ly anxious  about  the  result  of  the  game.  Yale, 
in  the  end,  was  quite  unexpectedly  beaten.  It 
is  not  too  much  to  say  that  a  certain  gloom  was 
distinctly  noticeable  afterward  everywhere  in 
New  Haven.  It  hung  over  people  who  were 
not  specially  interested  in  athletics  of  any  kind. 
It  affected  the  spirits  of  my  host's  parlormaid. 

Very  shortly  after  my  return  home  I 
watched  a  football  match  between  Dublin  Uni- 
versity and  Oxford.  The  play  was  just  as 
keen  and  sportsmanlike  as  the  play  between 
[284] 


COLLEGES   AND    STUDENTS 

Yale  and  Colgate;  but  there  was  nothing  like 
the  same  general  interest  in  the  game.  There 
was  a  sprinkling  of  spectators  round  the 
ground,  an  audience  which  could  not  compare 
in  size  with  that  of  Yale.  They  were  interested 
in  the  game,  intelligently  interested.  They 
applauded  good  play  when  they  saw  it;  but 
there  was  nothing  to  correspond  to  the  tense 
excitement  which  we  witnessed  in  America. 
The  game  was  a  game.  If  Dublin  won,  well 
and  good.  If  Oxford  won,  then  Dublin  must 
try  to  do  better  next  time.  No  one  feared  de- 
feat as  a  disaster.  No  one  was  prepared  to 
hail  victory  with  wild  enthusiasm.  A  stranger 
could  not  have  gone  through  New  Haven  on 
the  day  of  the  Yale  and  Colgate  football  match 
without  being  aware  that  something  of  great 
importance  was  happening.  The  whole  town 
seemed  to  be  streaming  toward  the  football 
ground.  In  Dublin  you  might  have  walked 
not  only  through  the  city  but  through  most 
parts  of  the  college  itself  on  the  day  of  the 
match  against  Oxford  and  you  would  not  have 
discovered,  unless  you  went  into  the  park,  that 

[285] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

there  was  a  football  match.  Yet  the  pride  of 
a  Dublin  man  in  his  university  is  as  deep  and 
lasting  as  that  of  any  American. 

The  reason  of  the  difference  is  perhaps  to 
be  found  in  the  fact  that  everything  connected 
with  university  athletics  is  far  more  highly  or- 
ganized in  America  than  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic.  The  undergraduate  spectators  are 
drilled  to  shout  together.  They  practice  be- 
forehand songs  which  they  sing  on  the  occasion 
of  the  match  for  the  encouragement  of  their 
own  side.  Young  men  with  megaphones  stand 
in  front  of  closely  packed  rows  of  undergrad- 
uates. They  give  the  signal  for  shouting. 
With  wavings  of  their  arms  they  conduct  the 
yells  of  the  crowd  as  musicians  conduct  their 
orchestras.  The  result  is  something  as  differ- 
ent as  possible  from  the  casual,  accidental  ap- 
plause of  our  spectators.  It  is  the  difference 
between  a  winter  rainstorm  and  the  shower  of 
an  April  morning.  This  organized  enthusiasm 
affects  everyone  present.  Sober-looking  men 
and  women  shout  and  wave  little  flags  tumul- 
tously. They  cannot  help  themselves.  I  un- 
[286] 


COLLEGES    AND    STUDENTS 

derstood,  after  seeing  that  football  match,  why 
it  is  that  America  produces  more  successful 
religious  revivalists  than  England  does.  The 
Americans  realize  that  emotion  is  highly  infec- 
tious. They  have  mastered  the  art  of  spread- 
ing it.  I  do  not  know  whether  this  is  a  useful 
art  or  not.  It  probably  is,  if  the  emotion  is 
a  genuine  and  worthy  one;  but  it  is  not  pleas- 
ant to  think  that  one  might  be  swept  away, 
temporarily  intoxicated,  by  the  skill  of  some 
organizer  who  is  engaged  in  propagating  a 
morbid  enthusiasm.  However  that  may  be, 
love  for  a  university  is  a  thoroughly  healthy 
thing.  It  cannot  be  wrong  to  foster  it  by 
songs  and  shouts  or  even — a  curious  reversion 
to  the  totem  religion  of  our  remote  ancestors — 
by  identifying  oneself  with  a  bulldog  or  a 
tiger. 

I  met  one  evening  some  young  men  who  had 
graduated  in  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  and 
afterwards  gone  over  for  a  post-graduate 
course  to  a  theological  college  connected  with 
one  of  the  American  universities.     We  talked 

[287] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

about  Dublin  chiefly,  but  I  made  one  inquiry 
from  them  about  their  American  experience. 

"I  suppose,"  I  said,  "that  you  have  to  work 
a  great  deal  harder  here  than  you  did  at 
home?" 

Their  answer  was  given  with  smiling  assur- 
ance. 

"Oh,  dear  no;  nothing  like  so  hard." 

I  should  like  very  much  to  have  further  re- 
liable information  on  this  point.  Something 
might  be  got,  perhaps,  by  consulting  a  number 
of  Rhodes  scholars  at  Oxford.  My  impres- 
sion, a  vague  one,  is  that  the  ordinary  undis- 
tinguished American  undergraduate  is  not  re- 
quired to  work  so  hard  as  an  undergraduate  of 
the  same  kind  is  in  England  or  Ireland.  In  an 
American  magazine  devoted  to  education  I 
came  across  an  article  which  complained  that,  in 
the  matter  of  what  may  be  called  examination 
knowledge,  the  American  undergraduate  is  not 
the  equal  of  the  English  undergraduate.  He 
does  not  know  as  much  when  he  enters  the  uni- 
versity and  he  does  not  know  as  much  when  he 
leaves  it.  This  was  an  American  opinion.  It 
[288] 


COLLEGES   AND    STUDENTS 

would  be  very  interesting  to  have  it  confirmed 
or  refuted.  But  no  one,  on  either  side  of  the 
Atlantic,  supposes  that  the  kind  of  knowledge 
which  is  useful  in  examinations  is  of  the  first 
importance.  The  value  of  a  university  does 
not  depend  upon  the  number  of  facts  which 
it  can  drive  into  the  heads  of  average  men; 
but  on  whether  it  can,  by  means  of  its  teaching 
and  its  atmosphere,  get  the  average  man  into 
the  habit  of  thinking  nobly,  largely  and  sanely. 
It  seems  certain  that  the  American  university 
training  does  have  a  permanent  effect  on  the 
men  who  go  through  it,  an  effect  like  that  pro- 
duced by  English  schools,  and  certainly  also  by 
English  universities,  on  their  students.  A  man 
who  is,  throughout  life,  loyal  to  his  school  or 
university  has  not  passed  through  it  uninflu- 
enced. It  seems  likely  that  the  American  uni- 
versities are  succeeding  in  turning  out  very 
good  citizens.  The  existence  of  what  I  have 
called  the  university  student  myth,  the  exist- 
ence of  a  general  opinion  that  university  men 
are  likely  to  be  found  on  the  side  of  civic  right- 

[289] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

eousness,  is  a  witness  to  the  fact  that  the  univer- 
sities are  doing  their  main  work  well. 

The  little,  the  very  little  I  was  able  to  see 
of  university  life  helped  me  to  understand  how 
the  work  is  being  done.  The  chapel  services, 
on  weekdays  and  Sundays,  were  in  many  ways 
strange  to  me  and  I  cannot  imagine  that  I, 
trained  in  other  rituals,  would  find  digestible 
the  bread  of  life  which  they  provide.  But  I 
was  profoundly  impressed  by  the  reality  of 
them.  Here  was  no  official  tribute  to  a  God 
conceived  of  as  a  constitutional  monarch  to 
whom  respect  and  loyalty  is  due  but  whose  will 
is  of  no  very  great  importance,  a  tribute  saved 
perhaps  from  formality  by  the  mystic  devotion 
of  a  few ;  but  an  effort,  groping  and  tentative 
no  doubt,  to  get  into  actual  personal  touch  with 
a  divinity  conceived  of  as  not  far  remote  from 
common  life.  These  chapel  services — exercises 
is  the  better  word  for  them — can  hardly  fail  to 
have  a  profound  effect  upon  the  ordinary  man. 
I  have  stood  in  the  chapel  of  Oriel  College  at 
Oxford  and  felt  that  now  and  then  men  of 
the  finer  kind,  worshiping  amid  the  austere 
[290] 


COLLEGES   AND    STUDENTS 

dignity  of  the  place,  might  grow  to  be  saints, 
might  see  with  their  eyes  and  handle  with  their 
hands  the  mysterious  Word  of  Life.  I  sat  in 
the  chapel  at  Princeton,  I  listened  to  a  sermon 
at  Yale,  and  felt  that  men  of  commoner  clay 
might  go  out  from  them  to  face  a  battering 
from  the  fists  and  boots  of  Tammany  gang- 
sters. 

It  seems  to  me  significant  that  Americans 
have  not  got  the  words  "don"  and  "donnish." 
They  are  terms  of  reproach  in  England,  but 
the  very  fact  that  they  are  in  use  proves  that 
they  are  required.  They  describe  what  exists. 
The  Americans  have  no  use  for  the  words  be- 
cause they  have  not  got  the  man  or  the  quality 
which  they  name.  The  teaching  staffs  of  the 
American  universities  do  not  develop  the  quali- 
ties of  the  don.  They  do  not  tend  to  become  a 
class  apart  with  a  special  outlook  upon  life.  It 
is  possible  to  meet  a  professor — even  a  profes- 
sor of  English  literature — in  ordinary  society, 
to  talk  to  him,  to  be  intimate  with  him  and  not 
to  discover  that  he  is  a  professor.  Charles 
Lamb  maintained  that  school-mastering  left  an 

[291] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

indelible  mark  upon  a  man,  that  having  school- 
mastered  he  never  afterward  was  quite  the 
same  as  other  men.  I  had  a  friend  once  who 
boasted  that  he  could  "spot"  a  parson  however 
he  was  dressed,  had  spotted  parsons  who  were 
not  dressed  at  all — in  Turkish  baths.  I  do  not 
believe  that  the  most  careful  student  of  pro- 
fessional mannerisms  could  detect  an  Amer- 
ican professor  out  of  his  lecture  room.  It  is 
possible  that  this  note  of  ordinary  worldliness 
in  the  members  of  the  staff  of  the  American 
university  has  a  beneficial  effect  upon  the  stu- 
dents. It  may  help  to  suggest  the  thought  that 
a  university  course  is  no  more  than  a  prepara- 
tion for  life,  is  not,  as  most  of  us  thought  once, 
a  thing  complete  in  itself. 

In  all  good  universities  there  is  a  broad 
democratic  spirit  among  the  undergraduates. 
They  may,  and  sometimes  do,  despise  the  stu- 
dents of  other  universities  as  men  of  inferior 
class,  but  they  only  despise  those  of  their  fel- 
low students  in  their  own  university  who, 
according  to  the  peculiar  standards  of  youth, 
deserve  contempt.  In  American  universities 
[292] 


COLLEGES   AND    STUDENTS 

this  democratic  spirit  is  stronger  than  it  is  with 
us  because  there  is  greater  opportunity  for  its 
development.  There  are  wider  differences  of 
wealth — it  is  difficult  to  speak  of  class  in 
America — among  the  university  students  there 
than  here.  There  are  no  men  in  English  or 
Irish  universities  earning  their  keep  by  clean- 
ing the  boots  and  pressing  the  clothes  of  their 
better-endowed  fellow  students.  In  American 
universities  there  are  such  men  and  it  is  quite 
possible  that  one  of  them  may  be  president  of 
an  important  club,  or  captain  of  a  team,  elected 
to  these  posts  by  the  very  men  whose  boots  he 
cleans.  If  he  is  fit  for  such  honors  they  will  be 
given  him.  The  fact  that  he  cleans  boots  will 
not  stand  in  his  way.  The  wisdom  of  medi- 
eval schoolmen  made  room  in  universities  for 
poor  students,  sizars,  servitors.  The  American 
universities,  with  their  committees  of  employ- 
ment for  students  who  want  to  earn,  are  doing 
the  old  thing  in  a  new  way;  and  public  opinion 
among  the  graduates  themselves  approves. 

On  the  subject   of  the   higher  university 
education  of  girls  American  opinion  is  sharply 

[293] 


FROM   DUBLIN    TO    CHICAGO 

divided.  There  are  people  there,  just  as  there 
are  in  England,  who  say  that  the  whole  thing 
is  a  mistake,  that  it  is  better  for  girls  not  to  go 
to  college  on  any  terms,  under  any  system.  I 
suppose  that  we  must  call  these  people  reac- 
tionary. There  cannot  be  very  many  of  them 
anywhere.  It  was  a  surprise  to  me  to  find 
any  at  all  in  America.  They  are  not,  I  think, 
very  influential.  Among  those  who  favor  the 
higher  education  of  girls  there  are  many  who 
believe  whole-heartedly  in  co-education.  I  had 
no  opportunity  of  seeing  a  co-educational  col- 
lege, but  I  listened  to  a  detailed  description  of 
the  life  in  one  from  a  lady  who  had  lived  it. 
According  to  her  co-education  is  the  one  per- 
fect system  yet  hit  upon.  Its  critics  urge  two 
curiously  inconsistent  objections  to  it.  One 
man,  who  is  a  philosopher  and  also  seemed  to 
know  what  he  was  talking  about,  told  me  that 
boys  and  girls  educated  together  lose  the  sense 
of  sex  mystery,  which  lies  at  the  base  of  ro- 
mantic love  and  consequently  do  not  want  to 
marry.  According  to  his  theory,  based  upon 
a  careful  observation  of  facts,  the  students  of 
[294] 


COLLEGES    AND    STUDENTS 

co-educational  universities  never  fall  in  love 
with  each  other  or  with  anyone  else.  If  the 
system  were  widely  adopted  and  had  this  effect 
upon  the  students  everywhere,  the  results 
would  certainly  be  very  unfortunate.  Another 
critic,  equally  well  informed,  said  that  the  real 
objection  to  co-education  is  that  the  students 
do  little  else  except  fall  in  love  with  each  other. 
This,  though  no  doubt  educative  in  a  broad 
sense  of  the  word,  is  not  exactly  the  kind  of 
education  we  send  boys  and  girls  to  universities 
to  get.  It  must  be  very  gratifying  to  the 
friends  of  the  system  to  feel  that  these  two  ob- 
jections cannot  both  be  sound. 

Co-educational  colleges  are  chiefly  to  be 
found  in  the  West,  among  the  newer  states.  In 
the  East  girls  get  their  higher  education  for 
the  most  part  in  colleges  of  their  own.  Smith 
College  for  instance  has  no  connection  with 
any  of  the  men's  universities.  Nor  has  Vassar 
nor  Bryn  Mawr.  These  institutions  have  their 
own  staffs,  their  own  courses  and  examinations, 
their  own  rules,  and  confer  their  own  degrees. 
Barnard  College,  on  the  other  hand,  is  closely 

[295] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

connected  with  Columbia  University,  occupy- 
ing much  the  same  position  as  Girton  and  St. 
Margaret's  Hall  do  with  regard  to  Cambridge 
and  Oxford,  scarcely  as  intimately  joined  to 
Columbia  as  Trinity  Hall  is  to  Dublin  Uni- 
versity. I  had  the  opportunity  of  learning 
something  of  the  life  of  Smith  College.  I  was 
immensely  impressed  by  the  spirit  of  the  place, 
as  indeed  I  was  by  that  of  all  the  girls'  schools 
and  colleges  which  I  saw.  There  was  an  in- 
fectious kind  of  eagerness  about  both  pupils 
and  teachers.  There  is  a  feeling  of  hopeful- 
ness. It  is  as  if  life  were  looked  upon  as  a 
great  and  joyful  adventure  in  which  many  dis- 
coveries of  good  things  may  be  expected,  much 
strenuous  work  may  be  done  gladly,  in  which 
no  disillusion  waits  for  those  who  are  of  good 
heart.  Not  the  girls  alone,  but  those  who  teach 
and  guide  them,  are  young,  young  in  the  way 
which  defies  the  passing  of  years  to  make  them 
old.  We  are  not  young  because  we  have  seen 
eighteen  summers  and  no  more,  or  old,  because 
we  have  seen  eighty.  We  are  old  when  we  have 
shut  the  doors  of  our  hearts  against  the  desire 
[296] 


COLLEGES   AND    STUDENTS 

of  new  things  and  steeled  ourselves  against 
the  hope  of  good.  We  are  young  if  we  re- 
fuse, even  when  our  heads  are  gray,  to  believe 
that  disappointment  inevitably  waits  for  us. 
The  world  and  everything  in  it  belongs  to  the 
young.  It  is  this  pervading  sense  of  youthful- 
ness  which  makes  the  American  girls'  colleges 
so  fascinating  to  a  stranger.  It  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  believe  that  the  girls  who  come  out  of 
them  are  able  to  take  their  places  by  the  side 
of  men  in  business  life,  or  if  the  commoner 
and  happier  lot  waits  them,  are  well  fitted  to  be 
the  partners  of  men  who  do  great  things  and 
the  mothers  of  men  who  will  do  greater  things 
still. 

I  take  it  that  the  American  universities,  both 
those  for  men  and  women,  are  the  greatest 
things  in  America  to-day.  This,  curiously 
enough,  is  not  the  American  idea.  The  ordi- 
nary American  citizen  is  proud  of  every  single 
thing  in  his  country  except  his  universities. 
He  is  always  a  little  apologetic  about  them. 
He  compares  his  country  with  England  and  is 
convinced  that  America  is  superior  in  every 

[297] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

respect,  except  the  matter  of  universities. 
When  he  speaks  of  the  English  universities 
he  shows  a  certain  sense  of  reverence  and  makes 
mention  of  his  own  much  in  the  spirit  of 
Touchstone  who  introduced  Audrey  as  "a  poor 
thing,  but  my  own." 


[298] 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE   IRISHMAN   ABROAD 

The  educated  American  seems  to  have  a 
great  deal  of  affection  for  Ireland,  but  is  not 
over  fond  of  Irishmen.  Our  country,  consid- 
ered as  an  Island  situated  on  the  far  side  of 
the  Atlantic,  makes  a  strong  appeal  to  him. 
It  is  a  land  of  thousand  wrongs,  a  pitiful 
waif  on  the  hard  highway  of  the  world.  It 
smells  strongly  of  poetry  and  music  in  a  minor 
key,  and  the  American  is,  like  all  good  busi- 
ness men,  an  incurable  sentimentalist. 

It  is  always  pleasant  to  be  loved  and  it  is 
nice  to  feel  that  America  has  this  affection  for 
our  poor,  lost  land.  But  the  love  would 
gratify  us  much  more  than  it  does  if  there 
were  a  little  less  pity  mixed  up  in  it,  and  if  it 
were  not  taken  for  granted  that  we  all  write 
poetry.     I  remember  meeting  an  American 

[299] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

lady  who  was  quite  lyrical  in  her  appreciation 
of  Ireland.  She  had  penetrated  into  the  coun- 
try as  far  as  Avoca,  making  the  trip  from 
Dublin  in  a  motor  car.  She  stayed,  so  she  told 
me,  "in  a  dear  old-fashioned  inn  in  Dublin." 
She  had  forgotten  its  name,  but  described  its 
situation  to  me  very  accurately.  I  could  not 
possibly  make  a  mistake  about  it.  My  heart 
was  hot  within  me  when  I  suggested  that  it 
might  have  been  the  Shelbourne  Hotel  at 
which  she  stayed.  Her  face  lit  up  with  a 
gleam  of  recognition  of  the  name. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "that's  it,  such  a  sweet  old 
place;  just  Ireland  all  over,  and  really  quite 
comfortable  when  you  get  used  to  it." 

Now  the  Shelbourne  Hotel  is  our  idea  of  a 
thoroughly  up-to-date,  cosmopolitan  caravan- 
serai. 

Even  after  a  visit  to  America  and  a  consid- 
erable experience  of  American  hotels,  I  cannot 
think  of  the  Shelbourne  Hotel  as  an  inn,  as 
old-fashioned,  or  as  in  any  way  Irish  except 
through  the  accident  of  its  situation.  It  evi- 
dently suggests  to  the  American  mind  tender 
[300] 


THE    IRISHMAN   ABROAD 

thoughts  of  Mr.  Yeats'  "small  cabin,  of  mud 
and  wattles  made"  on  Inishfree.  It  suggests 
no  such  thoughts  to  us.  Dinner  at  the  Shel- 
bourne  Hotel  costs  five  shillings,  nothing  to  an 
American,  of  course,  but  a  heavy  price  to  us 
in  Ireland.  It  consists  of  several  courses  and 
we  think  it  quite  a  grand  dinner.  It  seems  to 
the  American  that  he  is  at  last  reduced  to  the 
traditional  Irish  diet  of  potatoes  and  potheen 
whiskey.  It  is  this  wTay  of  thinking  about  Ire- 
land which  takes  the  sweetness  out  of  the 
American's  genuine  affection  for  our  country. 
We  do  not  mind  admitting  that  we  are  half  a 
century  behind  America  in  every  respect,  but 
we  like  to  think  that  we  are  making  some  prog- 
ress. 

An  American's  eyes  soften  when  you  talk  to 
him  about  Ireland,  and  you  feel  that  at  any 
moment  he  may  say  "dear  land,"  so  deep  is  his 
sentimental  pity  and  affection  for  our  country. 
But  his  eyes  harden  when  you  mention  Irish- 
men and  you  feel  that  at  any  moment  he  may 
say  something  very  nasty  about  them.  The 
plain  fact  is  that  Irishmen  are  not  very  popular 

[301] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

in  America.  We  have,  it  appears,  managed 
the  American's  municipal  politics  for  him  in 
several  of  his  principal  cities  and  he  does  not 
like  it.  But  I  am  not  sure  that  his  resentment 
is  quite  just.  Somebody  must  manage  munici- 
pal politics  everywhere.  For  a  good  many 
years  the  American  would  not  manage  them 
himself.  He  was  too  busy  making  money  to 
bother  himself  about  municipal  politics.  We 
took  over  the  job — at  a  price.  He  paid  the 
price  with  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders.  I  cannot 
see  that  he  has  much  to  complain  about.  Lately 
he  has  kicked — not  against  the  size  of  the  price 
— it  is  not  the  American  way  to  higgle  about 
money — but  against  there  being  any  price  at 
all.  He  has  got  it  into  his  head  that  municipal 
politics  ought  to  be  run  "free  gratis  and  for 
nothing"  by  high-souled  patriotic  men.  I  sin- 
cerely hope  that  he  will  realize  his  ideal,  though 
I  doubt  whether  any  politics  anywhere  can  be 
run  in  that  way.  It  will  certainly  be  better  for 
my  fellow  countrymen  to  earn  their  bread  in 
any  way  rather  than  by  politics.  But  there  is 
no  sense  in  being  angry  with  us  or  abusing  us. 
[302] 


THE    IRISHMAN   ABROAD 

We  worked  the  machine  and  took  our  wages. 
The  American  watched  the  machine  running 
and  paid  the  wages.  There  was  not  much  to 
choose  between  him  and  us. 

There  is  another  reason  why  we  are  not  as 
popular  as  we  might  be — as,  no  doubt,  we 
ought  to  be — in  America.  We  have  remained 
Irish.  One  of  the  most  wonderful  things  about 
America  is  its  power  of  absorbing  people.  Men 
and  women  flow  into  it  from  all  corners  of  the 
world,  and  in  a  very  short  time,  in  a  couple  of 
generations,  become  American.  I  have  seen  it 
stated  that  the  very  shapes  of  the  skulls  of  im- 
migrants alter  in  America;  that  the  son  of  an 
Italian  man  has  an  American  not  an  Italian 
skull,  even  if  his  mother  also  came  from  Italy. 
Whether  this  change  really  takes  place  in  the 
bones  of  immigrants  I  do  not  know.  Quite  as 
surprising  a  change  certainly  does  take  place  in 
their  nature.  They  cease  to  be  foreigners  and 
become  American.  But  the  Irish  have  never 
been  thoroughly  Americanized.  Their  Ameri- 
can citizenship  becomes  a  great  and  dear  thing 
to  them,  but  they  are  still  in  some  sense  citizens 

[303] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

of  Ireland.  If  a  question  ever  arose  in  which 
American  interests  clashed  with  Irish  interests 
there  might  well  be  a  solid  Irish  vote  in  favor 
of  sacrificing  America  to  Ireland.  The  Irish 
are  a  partial  exception  to  the  rule  that  America 
absorbs  its  immigrants.  It  has  not  thoroughly 
absorbed  us. 

This  is  the  shape  which  the  Irish  problem 
has  assumed  in  America.  Here  at  home  the 
question  is,  is  England  to  govern  Irishmen? 
It  has  obviously  failed  to  make  Englishmen 
of  us.  On  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic  the 
question  is :  Are  Irishmen  to  govern  America  ? 
America  has  not  succeeded  in  making  Ameri- 
cans of  all  of  us  so  far. 

So  far.  But  the  position  of  Irishmen  in 
America  is  changing.  There  was  a  time  when 
we  took  our  place  in  the  American  social  order 
as  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water.  We 
were  the  navvies,  the  laborers,  the  men  who 
handled  the  pickaxe  and  spade.  Now  it  is  men 
of  other  races  who  do  this  work — Italians  and 
Slavs.  We  have  risen  in  the  scale.  The  Irish 
emigrant  who  lands  in  New  York  to-day  starts 
[304] 


THE    IRISHMAN   ABROAD 

higher  up  than  the  Irish  emigrant  of  twenty- 
five  years  ago.  So  long  as  we  were  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  social  scale  we  were  bound  together 
by  a  community  of  interest  and  outlook  as 
well  as  by  nationality.  We  were  easily  organ- 
ized as  a  voting  unit.  But  men,  as  they  rise 
in  the  world,  tend  more  and  more  to  become  in- 
dividuals. They  have  differing  interests.  They 
look  at  things  in  different  ways.  They  are  far 
more  difficult  to  organize.  The  sense  of  origi- 
nal nationality  will  remain  to  us,  no  doubt,  as 
it  remains  among  Americans  of  Scottish  de- 
scent. But  it  may  cease  to  be  an  effective  po- 
litical force. 

The  Ulster  Irishman  went  to  America  in 
large  numbers  before  there  was  any  great  im- 
migration of  southern  and  western  Irishmen. 
He  fought  his  way  up  in  the  social  scale  very 
quickly  and  became  thoroughly  Americanized. 
He  has  had  a  profound  influence  on  American 
civilization  and  character.  It  has  been  the  in- 
fluence of  digested  food,  not  the  force  exercised 
by  a  lump  of  dough  swallowed  hastily.  But  in 
time  even  a  lump  of  dough  is  digested  by  a 

[305] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

healthy  stomach  and  the  gradual  rise  of  the 
Irish  in  the  social  life  of  America  looks  like 
the  beginning  of  the  process  of  digestion. 

There  is  something  else  besides  the  change  in 
his  social  position  which  will  in  time  make  it 
easier  for  America  to  absorb  thoroughly  the 
Irish  immigrant.  The  Irish  who  went  to 
America  during  the  last  half  of  the  19th  cen- 
tury left  their  homes  with  a  sense  in  them  of 
burning  wrong.  They  were  men  who  hated. 
They  hated  England  and  all  in  Irish  life  which 
stood  for  England.  This  hate  bound  them  to- 
gether. Irish  political  struggles,  whether  of 
the  Fenian  or  the  Parnell  type,  appealed  to 
them.  Ireland  was,  in  one  way  or  the  other, 
up  against  England.  But  all  this  has  changed. 
Irish  politicians  are  no  longer  engaged  in  a 
struggle  with  England.  They  are  in  alliance 
with  one  set  of  Englishmen  and  only  against 
another  set  of  Englishmen.  There  is  in  Irish 
politics  at  home  an  appeal  to  the  man  of  party 
feeling.  He  is  keen  enough  for  his  own  party, 
keen  enough  against  the  other  party,  but  when 
he  gets  to  America  neither  of  the  parties  at 
[306] 


THE    IRISHMAN   ABROAD 

home  can  move  him  to  any  special  enthusiasm. 
He  no  longer,  when  at  home,  hates  England. 
He  hates,  if  hate  is  not  too  strong  a  word,  some 
Englishmen.  There  is  a  great  difference  be- 
tween hating  England  and  hating  some  Eng- 
lishmen, when  you  are  so  far  away  that  all 
Englishmen  get  blurred.  It  is  easy  in  Ireland 
to  feel  that  Codlin  is  the  friend,  not  Short. 
It  is  not  so  easy  to  distinguish  Codlin  from 
Short,  Liberal  from  Conservative,  when  they 
are  both  no  more  than  little  dots,  barely  visible 
at  a  distance  of  three  thousand  miles.  Codlin 
gets  mixed  up  with  Short.  Some  of  the  orig- 
inal party  hatred  of  Short  attaches  to  Codlin, 
no  doubt.  But  some  of  the  love  for  Codlin, 
love  which  is  the  fruit  of  long  alliance,  passes 
to  Short. 

I  do  not  mean  to  suggest  that  the  sense  of 
nationality  has  passed  away  from  Ireland.  It 
has  not.  In  some  ways  the  spirit  of  national- 
ity is  stronger  in  Ireland  to-day  than  it  was 
at  any  time  during  the  last  century.  It  has 
certainly  penetrated  to  classes  which  used  to 
have  no  consciousness  of  nationality  at  all. 

[307] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

There  are  fewer  Irishmen  now  who  are  ashamed 
of  being  Irish.  There  are  more  men  now  than 
ever,  in  every  class,  who  want  the  good  of  Ire- 
land as  distinguished  from  that  of  England 
or  of  any  other  country.  But  the  sense  of  na- 
tionality has  to  a  very  large  extent  passed  out 
of  Irish  political  life.  The  platform  appeal 
of  the  politician  to  the  voter  in  Ireland  now 
is  far  oftener  an  appeal  to  Irishmen  as  part 
of  the  British  democracy  than  to  Irishmen 
as  members  of  a  nation  governed  against  its 
will  by  foreigners.  The  ideas  of  John 
O'Leary,  even  the  ideas  of  Parnell,  have  al- 
most vanished  from  Irish  political  life.  In- 
stead of  them  we  have  the  idea  of  international 
democracy. 

This  change  of  feeling  in  Ireland  itself  will 
make  for  a  modification  of  the  position  of  the 
Irish  in  America.  They  will  tend,  as  the  older 
generation  passes,  to  become  more  American 
and  less  Irish.  This  is  already  felt  in  Ire- 
land itself.  Of  late  years  there  has  arisen  a 
strong  feeling  against  emigration.  It  is  real- 
ized, as  it  used  not  to  be,  that  Ireland  loses 
[308] 


THE    IRISHMAN   ABROAD 

those  who  go.  The  feeling  is  quite  new.  The 
phrase  "a  greater  Ireland  beyond  the  seas"  is 
beginning  to  mean  a  little  less  than  it  did,  and 
the  general  consciousness  of  patriotic  Irish- 
men at  home  is  instinctively  recognizing  this. 
But  it  is  noticeable  that  this  dislike  of  emigra- 
tion has  not  found  expression  among  politi- 
cians. The  movement  is  outside  politics.  The 
local  political  boss  is  frequently  an  emigration 
agent  and  feels  no  inconsistency  in  his  posi- 
tion. 

It  would  be  quite  easy  to  exaggerate  the 
present  value  of  the  change  I  have  tried  to  in- 
dicate. The  old  solidarity  of  the  Irish  in 
America  remains  a  fact.  It  is  to  Irish  friends 
and  relatives  that  our  emigrants  go.  It  is 
among  Irish  people  that  they  live  when  they 
settle  in  America.  It  is  Irish  people  whom 
they  marry.  But  the  tendency  is  toward  a 
breaking  away  from  this  national  isolation. 

The  movement  against  emigration  at  home 
has  much  in  it  besides  the  instinctive  protest 
of  a  nation  against  the  loss  of  its  people.  It  is 
in  part  religious  and  rests  on  a  fear  that  faith 

[309] 


FROM  DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

is  more  easily  lost  in  America  than  in  Ireland. 
It  is  in  part  no  doubt  the  result  of  shrinking 
of  sensitive  and  loving  souls  from  the  horror 
of  the  great  sorrow  of  farewell. 

All  emotions  lose  their  keenness  with  repeti- 
tion. The  fine  rapture  of  a  joy  is  never  quite  so 
delightful  as  it  was  when  the  joy  came  first  and 
was  strange.  The  bitterness  of  sorrow  and  dis- 
appointment gradually  loses  its  intensity  when 
sorrow  and  disappointment  become  familiar 
things.  Even  insults  cease  after  a  while  to  move 
us  to  fierce  anger.  The  law  is  universal;  but 
there  are  some  emotions  which  are  only  very 
slowly  dulled.  The  sadness  which  comes  of 
watching  the  departure  of  a  train  full  of  Irish 
emigrants  is  one  of  these.  We  are,  or  ought  to 
be,  well  accustomed  to  the  sight.  Those  of  us 
who  have  lived  long  in  the  country  parts  of 
Ireland  have  seen  these  trains  and  traveled  a 
little  way  in  them  many  times ;  but  we  are  still 
saddened,  hardly  less  saddened  than  when  we 
saw  them  first. 

There  is  one  day  in  the  week  on  which  emi- 
grants go,  and  in  the  west  of  Ireland  one  train 
[310] 


THE    IRISHMAN   ABROAD 

on  that  day  by  which  they  travel.  It  goes 
slowly,  stopping  at  every  station  no  matter 
how  small,  and  at  every  station  there  is  the 
same  scene.  The  platform  is  crowded  long  be- 
fore the  train  comes  in.  There  are  many  old 
women  weeping  without  restraint,  mothers 
these,  or  grandmothers  of  the  boys  and  girls 
who  are  going.  Their  eyes  are  swollen.  Their 
cheeks  are  tear-stained.  Every  now  and  then 
one  of  them  wails  aloud,  and  the  others,  catch- 
ing at  the  sound,  wail  with  her,  their  voices 
rising  and  falling  in  a  kind  of  weird  melody 
like  the  ancient  plain  song  of  the  church. 
There  are  men,  too,  but  they  are  more  silent. 
Very  often  their  eyes  are  wet.  Their  lips, 
tightly  pressed,  twitch  spasmodically.  Occa- 
sionally an  uncontrollable  sob  breaks  from  one 
of  them.  The  boys  and  girls  who  are  to  go 
are  helplessly  sorrow  stricken.  It  is  no  longer 
possible  for  them  to  weep,  for  they  have  wept 
too  much  already.  They  are  drooping  despair- 
ingly. At  their  feet  are  carpet  bags  and  little 
yellow  tin  trunks,  each  bearing  a  great  flaring 
steamboat  label.    They  wear  stiff  new  clothes, 

[311] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

shoddy  tweed  suits  from  the  shop  of  the  vil- 
lage draper,  dresses  and  blouses  long  discussed 
with  some  country  dressmaker.  These  pitiful 
braveries  mark  them  out  unmistakably  from 
the  men  in  muddy  frieze  and  the  women  in 
wide  crimson  petticoats,  with  shawls  over  their 
heads,  who  have  come  to  say  good-by. 

The  train  comes  in.  There  is  a  rush  to  the 
carriage  doors.  Soon  the  windows  of  the  car- 
riages are  filled  with  tear-stained  faces. 
Hands  are  stretched  out,  grasped,  held  tight. 
Final  kisses  are  pressed  on  lips  and  cheeks. 
The  guard  of  the  train  gives  his  signal  at  last. 
The  engine  whistles.  A  porter,  mercifully 
brutal,  by  main  force  pushes  the  people  back. 
The  train  moves  slowly,  gathers  speed.  For  a 
while  the  whole  crowd  moves  along  the  plat- 
form beside  the  train.  Then  a  long  sad  cry 
rises,  swelling  to  a  pitch  of  actual  agony. 
Some  brave  soul  somewhere  chokes  down  a  sob, 
waves  his  hat  and  makes  pretence  to  cheer. 
Then  the  scene  is  over. 

What  happens  next  in  the  railway  carriages  ? 
For  a  while  there  is  sobbing  or  silence.  Then 
[312] 


THE    IRISHMAN   ABROAD 

wonder  and  the  excitement  of  change  begin  to 
take  the  place  of  grief.  Words  are  whispered, 
questions  asked.  Little  stores  of  money  are 
taken  out  and  counted  over.  Steamboat  tickets 
are  examined,  unfolded,  folded,  put  in  yet 
securer  places.  Already  the  present  is  some- 
thing more  than  a  dull  ache;  and  the  future  is 
looked  to  as  well  as  the  past. 

What  happens  next  to  the  crowd  which  was 
left  behind?  In  little  groups  the  men  and 
women  go  slowly  back  along  the  country  roads 
to  the  houses  left  at  dawn,  go  back  to  take  up 
the  work  of  every  day.  Poverty  is  a  merciful 
mistress  to  those  whom  she  holds  in  bondage. 
There  are  the  fields  to  be  dug,  the  cattle  to 
be  tended,  the  bread  to  be  made.  The  steady 
succession  of  things  which  must  be  done  dulls 
the  edge  of  grief.  They  suffer  less  who  are 
obliged  to  work  as  well  as  weep.  But  the  sor- 
row remains.  He  has  but  a  shallow  knowledge 
of  our  people  who  supposes  that  because  they 
go  about  the  business  of  their  lives  afterward 
as  they  did  before  there  is  no  lasting  reality 
in  their  grief.    An  Irish  mother  will  say:    "I 

[313] 


FROM  DUBLIN   TO    CHICAGO 

had  seven  childer,  but  there's  only  two  of  them 
left  to  me  now.  I  buried  two  and  three  is  in 
America."  She  classes  those  who  have  crossed 
the  sea  with  those  who  are  dead.  Both  are 
lost  to  her. 

Sometimes  those  who  have  gone  are  indeed 
lost  utterly.  There  comes  a  letter  once,  and 
after  a  long  interval  another  letter.  Then  no 
more  letters  nor  any  news  at  all.  More  often 
there  is  some  kind  of  touch  kept  with  the 
people  at  home.  Letters  come  at  Christmas 
time,  often  with  very  welcome  gifts  of  money 
in  them.  There  are  photographs.  Molly, 
whom  we  all  knew  when  she  was  a  bare-footed 
child  running  home  from  school,  whom  we 
remember  as  a  half -grown  girl  climbing  into 
her  father's  cart  on  market  days,  appears  al- 
most a  stranger  in  her  picture.  Her  clothes 
are  grand  beyond  our  imagining.  Her  face 
has  a  new  look  in  it.  There  are  few  Irish 
country  houses  in  which  such  photographs  are 
not  shown  with  a  mixture  of  pride  and  grief. 
It  is  a  fine  thing  that  Molly  is  so  grand.  It  is 
a  sad  thing  that  Molly  is  so  strange. 
[314] 


THE    IRISHMAN   ABROAD 

Sometimes,  but  not  very  often,  a  boy  or  girl 
comes  home  again,  like  a  frightened  child  to  a 
mother.  America  is  too  hard  for  some  of  us. 
These  are  beaten  and  return  to  the  old  poverty, 
preferring  it  because  the  ways  of  Irish  pov- 
erty are  less  strenuous  than  the  ways  of  Amer- 
ican success.  Sometimes,  but  this  is  rare  too, 
a  young  man  or  woman  returns,  not  beaten 
but  satisfied  with  moderate  success.  These 
bring  with  them  money,  the  girl  a  marriage 
portion  for  herself,  the  man  enough  to  restock 
his  father's  farm,  which  he  looks  to  inherit  in 
the  future.  Sometimes  older  people  come  back 
to  buy  land,  build  houses  and  settle  down.  But 
these  are  always  afterward  strangers  in  Irish 
life.  They  never  recapture  the  spirit  of  it. 
They  have  worked  in  America,  thought  in 
America,  breathed  in  America.  America  has 
marked  them  as  hers  and  they  are  ours  no 
longer  though  they  come  back  to  us. 

Often  we  have  passing  visits  from  those  who 
left  us.  The  new  easiness  of  traveling  and  the 
comparative  comfort  of  the  journey  make 
these  visits  commoner  than  they  were.     Our 

[315] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

friends  come  back  for  two  months  or  three.  It 
is  wonderful  to  see  how  quickly  they  seem  to 
fall  into  the  old  ways.  The  young  man,  who 
was  perhaps  an  insurance  agent  in  New  York, 
will  fold  away  his  city  clothes  and  turn  to  with 
a  loy  at  cutting  turf.  The  girl,  who  got  out 
of  the  train  so  fine  to  look  at  that  her  own 
father  hardly  dared  to  greet  her,  will  be  out 
next  day  in  the  fields  making  hay  with  her  sis- 
ters and  brothers.  But  there  is  a  restlessness 
about  these  visitors  of  ours.  They  want  us  to 
do  new  things.  They  find  much  amiss  which 
we  had  not  noticed.  They  are  back  with  us 
and  glad  to  be  back;  but  America  is  calling 
them  all  the  time.  There  is  very  much  that  we 
cannot  give.  Soon  they  will  go  again,  and  any 
tears  shed  at  the  second  parting  are  ours,  not 
theirs. 

There  are  many  histories  of  Ireland  dealing 
sometimes  with  the  whole,  sometimes  with  this 
or  that  part  of  her  story.  They  are  written 
with  the  passion  of  patriots,  with  the  bitterness 
of  enemies,  with  the  blind  fury  of  partisans, 
with  the  cold  justice  of  scientific  men  who 
[316] 


THE    IRISHMAN   ABROAD 

stand  aloof.  None  of  them  are  wholly  satis- 
factory as  histories  of  England  are,  or  his- 
tories of  America.  No  one  can  write  a  history 
of  Ireland  which  will  set  forth  intelligently 
Ireland's  place  in  the  world.  We  wait  for  the 
coming  of  some  larger-minded  man  who  will 
write  the  history,  not  of  Ireland,  but  of  the 
Irish.  In  one  respect  it  is  not  with  us  as  it  is 
with  other  nations.  Their  stories  center  in 
their  homes.  Their  conquerors  go  forth,  but 
return  again.  Their  thinkers  live  amid  the 
scenes  on  which  their  eyes  first  opened.  Their 
contributions  to  human  knowledge  are  con- 
nected in  all  men's  minds  with  their  own  lands. 
The  statesmen  of  other  nations  rule  their  own 
people,  build  empires  on  which  their  own  flag 
flies.  The  workmen  of  other  nations,  captains 
of  industry  or  sweating  laborers,  make  wealth 
in  their  home  lands.  It  has  never  been  so 
with  us. 

Our  historian  when  he  comes  and  writes  of 
us  may  take  as  the  motto  of  his  book  Virgil's 
comment  on  the  honey-making  of  the  bees. 
"Sic  vos  non  vobis."    Long  ago  we  spread  the 

[317] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

gospel  of  the  Cross  over  the  dark  places  of 
Europe.  The  monasteries  of  our  monks,  the 
churches  of  our  missionary  preachers  were 
everywhere.  But  our  own  land  is  still  the  prey 
of  that  acrimonious  theological  bitterness  which 
is  of  all  things  the  most  utterly  opposed  to  the 
spirit  of  Christ.  So  we,  but  not  for  ourselves, 
made  sweetness.  Kant  is  a  German.  Berg- 
son  is  a  Frenchman.  All  the  world  knows  it. 
Who  knows  or  cares  that  John  Scotus  Erigena 
or  Bishop  Berkeley  were  Irish?  The  great- 
ness of  their  names  has  shed  no  luster  over  us. 
Our  captains  and  soldiers  have  fought  and 
won  under  every  flag  in  Europe  and  under  the 
Stars  and  Stripes  of  America.  Under  our 
own  flag  they  rarely  fought  and  never  won. 
Statesmen  of  our  race  have  been  among  the 
governors  of  almost  every  nation  under  the 
sun.  Our  own  land  we  have  never  governed 
yet.  The  names  of  Swift,  of  Goldsmith,  of 
Sheridan,  of  a  score  of  other  men  of  letters  add 
to  the  glory  of  the  record  of  English  literature, 
not  of  ours.  Our  people  by  their  toil  of  mind 
and  muscle  have  made  other  lands  rich  in 
[318] 


THE    IRISHMAN   ABROAD 

manufacture  and  commerce.    Ireland  remains 
poor. 

That  is  why  there  is  not  and  cannot  be  a  his- 
tory of  Ireland.  It  is  never  in  Ireland  that 
our  history  has  been  made.  The  threads  of  our 
story  are  ours,  spun  at  home,  but  they  are 
woven  into  splendid  fabrics  elsewhere,  not  in 
Ireland.  But  the  history  of  the  Irish  people 
will  be  a  great  work  when  it  is  written.  There 
will  be  strange  chapters  in  it,  and  none 
stranger  than  those  which  tell  of  our  part  in 
the  making  of  America.  It  will  be  a  record 
of  mingled  good  and  evil,  but  it  will  always 
have  in  it  the  elements  of  high  romance.  From 
the  middle  of  the  18th  century,  when  the  tide 
of  emigration  set  westward  from  Ulster, 
down  to  to-day  when  with  slackening  force  it 
flows  from  Connaught,  those  who  went  have 
always  been  the  men  and  women  for  whom  life 
at  home  seemed  hopeless.  There  was  no  prom- 
ise of  good  for  them  here.  But  in  spite  of  the 
intolerable  sadness  of  their  going,  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  at  home  they  were  beaten  men, 
there  was  in  them  some  capacity  for  doing 

[319] 


FROM   DUBLIN   TO   CHICAGO 

things.  We  can  succeed,  it  seems,  elsewhere 
but  not  here.  This  is  the  strange  law  which 
has  governed  our  history.  We  recognize  its 
force  everywhere  for  centuries  back.  America 
gives  the  latest  example  of  its  working.  An 
Irishman  returns  from  a  visit  to  America  won- 
dering, despairing,  hoping.  The  wonder  is  in 
him  because  he  knows  those  who  went  and  has 
seen  the  manner  of  their  going.  Success  for 
them  seemed  impossible,  yet  very  often  they 
have  succeeded.  The  despair  is  in  him  because 
he  knows  that  it  has  always  been  in  other  lands, 
not  in  their  own  that  our  people  succeed,  and 
because  there  is  no  power  which  can  alter  the 
decrees  of  destiny.  But  hope  survives  in  him, 
flickering,  because  what  our  people  can  do  else- 
where they  can  certainly  do  at  home  if  only 
we  can  discover  the  solution  of  the  malignant 
riddle  of  our  failure. 


[320] 


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